Performance and economic feasibility of industrial-scale oxygen production by three-tower VPSA process coupled with partial flushing equalization and natural aspiration/exhaust technology

IF 3.1 4区工程技术 Q3 CHEMISTRY, PHYSICAL

Adsorption Pub Date : 2026-02-09 DOI:10.1007/s10450-026-00677-0

Chen Ling, Enjun Chen, Yuyao Zhang, Ziyang Niu, Guangyu Yang, Zanhua Chen, Liuqiang Zhao, Tong Yuan

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Abstract

A three-tower, nine-step vacuum pressure swing adsorption (VPSA) process coupled with the partial flushing equalization (PFE) and natural aspiration/exhaust (NA/NE) technology was proposed and used for largest industrial-scale 80% oxygen production project in China in this study. The performance of the VPSA system during one whole year showed an obvious seasonal variation, being directly related to the atmosphere humidity and temperature. Correlation analysis between working condition and three performance indicators indicated that feed water and adsorber tower temperature exhibited highly similar linear profiles with respect to O₂ recovery and productivity, whereas contrary trend was observed for product flow rate. To achieve the relative constant product flow rate of 56,000 Nm³/h and O₂ purity of 83%, two approaches were used in the case of low temperature: decreasing the frequency of blower or increasing the vacuum level. Either way, the obtained higher adsorption/desorption pressure (P_H/P_L) ratio can indeed increase the O₂ purity. Moreover, the typical half-V-shaped profile of energy consumption with increase in adsorber temperature indicated that excessively high or low adsorber tower temperatures led to higher energy consumption. Although higher energy consumption was obtained for lower adsorber temperature of 21–30 ℃ in winter due to the NA process, the competitive energy consumption of 0.28–0.31 kWh/m³ contributed to the economic feasibility of the three-tower, nine-step VPSA process for simultaneous achieving higher O₂ yield and lower energy consumption.

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三塔VPSA工艺结合部分冲洗均衡和自然抽/排技术的工业规模制氧性能和经济可行性

本研究提出了一种三塔九步真空变压吸附（VPSA）工艺，结合部分冲洗均衡（PFE）和自然抽排（NA/NE）技术，并将其用于中国最大的工业规模80%的制氧项目。VPSA系统全年性能表现出明显的季节变化，与大气湿度和温度直接相关。工况与3个性能指标的相关分析表明，给水温度和吸附塔温度对O2回收率和产率的线性关系非常相似，而对产品流量的线性关系则相反。为了达到56000 Nm3/h的相对恒定产品流量和83%的O2纯度，在低温情况下采用两种方法：降低鼓风机频率或提高真空度。无论哪种方式，获得的较高的吸附/解吸压力（PH/PL）比确实可以提高O2纯度。能耗随吸附塔温度升高呈典型的半v型曲线，表明吸附塔温度过高或过低都会导致能耗升高。虽然NA工艺在冬季吸附器温度为21 ~ 30℃时能耗较高，但具有竞争力的0.28 ~ 0.31 kWh/m3的能耗使得三塔九步VPSA工艺在实现高氧产率和低能耗的同时具有经济可行性。

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来源期刊

Adsorption 工程技术-工程：化工

CiteScore

8.10

自引率

3.00%

发文量

审稿时长

2.4 months

期刊介绍： The journal Adsorption provides authoritative information on adsorption and allied fields to scientists, engineers, and technologists throughout the world. The information takes the form of peer-reviewed articles, R&D notes, topical review papers, tutorial papers, book reviews, meeting announcements, and news. Coverage includes fundamental and practical aspects of adsorption: mathematics, thermodynamics, chemistry, and physics, as well as processes, applications, models engineering, and equipment design. Among the topics are Adsorbents: new materials, new synthesis techniques, characterization of structure and properties, and applications; Equilibria: novel theories or semi-empirical models, experimental data, and new measurement methods; Kinetics: new models, experimental data, and measurement methods. Processes: chemical, biochemical, environmental, and other applications, purification or bulk separation, fixed bed or moving bed systems, simulations, experiments, and design procedures.