Separation of CH4/H2/CO2 Gas Mixtures Using Spherical Pellets of Deposited Zeolites on Monmorillonite

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Catalyst Research Center, Chem. Eng. Dept., Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran.

Abstract

Gas purification is necessary for many industrial processes, and the using of zeolite adsorbents is one of the low-cost methods in this field. The aim of this work is to synthesize three types of zeolite/quasi-zeolite through hydrothermal technique and evaluate their efficiency in the performance of hydrogen gas purification. The gas mixture contained hydrogen, carbon dioxide and methane. The results indicated that at different pressures, the adsorption of the desired gases at lower temperatures is more favorable. Although all three adsorbents had great performance, for all three adsorbents, carbon dioxide adsorption was higher than methane adsorption, and the order of efficiency was as follows: NaA>SAPO-34>BaA. However, SAPO-34 owned a more superior functioning in absorbing methane, and the performance was as follows: SAPO-34>NaA>BaA. It should be remarked that at pressures less than 300 kPa, the adsorption of the desired gases in the BaA adsorbent reached a higher value faster and shows the superb acting of this adsorbent at low pressures.

Keywords

Main Subjects


[1] Ediger VŞ. An integrated review and analysis of multi-energy transition from fossil fuels to
renewables. Energy Procedia. 2019; 156: 2-6.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egypro.2018.11.073.
[2] Hosseini S, Moradi G, Bahrami K. Acidic functionalized nanobohemite: An active catalyst
for methyl ester production. International Journal of Chemical Reactor Engineering. 2019;
17(11): 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijcre-2018-0283.
[3] Palmer G. Renewables rise above fossil fuels. Nature Energy. 2019; 4(7): 538-539.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-019-0426-y.
[4] Bhan C, Verma L, Singh J. Alternative Fuels for Sustainable Development. Environmental
Concerns and Sustainable Development. Springer. 2020; 317-331.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-5889-0_16.
[5] Moriarty P, Honnery D. Global renewable energy resources and use in 2050. Managing
Global Warming. Elsevier. 2019; 221-235. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-814104-
5.00006-5.
[6] Chapman A, Itaoka K, Hirose K, Davidson FT, Nagasawa K, Lloyd AC, Webber ME,
Kurban Z, Managi S, Tamaki T. A review of four case studies assessing the potential for
hydrogen penetration of the future energy system. International Journal of Hydrogen
Energy. 2019; 44(13): 6371-6382. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2019.01.168.
[7] McCarty RD, Roder H. Selected properties of hydrogen (engineering design data), US
Department of Commerce. National Bureau of Standards. 1981.
https://doi.org/10.6028/NBS.MONO.168.
[8] Pan X, Yan W, Jiang Y, Wang Z, Hua M, Wang Q, Jiang J. Experimental investigation of
the self-ignition and jet flame of hydrogen jets released under different conditions. ACS
Omega. 2019; 4(7): 12004-12011. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.9b01214.
[9] Sharma S, Ghoshal SK. Hydrogen the future transportation fuel: from production to
applications. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 2015; 43: 1151-1158.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2014.11.093.
[10] Rievaj V, Gaňa J, Synák F. Is hydrogen the fuel of the future?. Transportation Research
Procedia. 2019; 40: 469-474. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2019.07.068.
[11] Jie X, Gonzalez-Cortes S, Xiao T, Yao B, Wang J, Slocombe DR, Fang Y, Miller N, AlMegren HA, Dilworth JR. The decarbonisation of petroleum and other fossil hydrocarbon
fuels for the facile production and safe storage of hydrogen. Energy & Environmental
Science. 2019; 12: 238-249. https://doi.org/10.1039/C8EE02444H.
[12] Liu Y, Yong X, Liu Z, Chen Z, Kang Z, Lu S. Unified catalyst for efficient and stable
hydrogen production by both the electrolysis of water and the hydrolysis of ammonia
borane. Advanced Sustainable Systems. 2019; 3(5): 1800161.
https://doi.org/10.1002/adsu.201800161.
[13] Ngo SI, Lim YI, Kim W, Seo DJ, Yoon WL. Computational fluid dynamics and
experimental validation of a compact steam methane reformer for hydrogen production
from natural gas. Applied Energy. 2019; 236: 340-353.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.11.075.
[14] SriBala G, Michiels D, Leys C, Van Geem KM, Marin GB, Nikiforov A. Methane
reforming to valuable products by an atmospheric pressure direct current discharge. Journal
of Cleaner Production. 2019; 209: 655-664. http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-8580691. 
[15] Hayakawa Y, Miura T, Shizuya K, Wakazono S, Tokunaga K, Kambara S. Hydrogen
production system combined with a catalytic reactor and a plasma membrane reactor from
ammonia. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. 2019; 44(20), 9987-9993.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2018.12.141.
[16] Jamali S, Mofarahi M, Rodrigues AE. Investigation of a novel combination of adsorbents
for hydrogen purification using Cu-BTC and conventional adsorbents in pressure swing
adsorption. Adsorption. 2018; 24(5): 481-498. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10450-018-9955-0.
[17] Bahadori A, Kashiwao T. Modeling and analysis of hydrogen production in steam methane
reforming (SMR) process. Petroleum Science and Technology. 2019; 37(12): 1425-1435.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10916466.2019.1587466.
[18] Shamsudin I, Abdullah A, Idris I, Gobi S, Othman M. Hydrogen purification from binary
syngas by PSA with pressure equalization using microporous palm kernel shell activated
carbon. Fuel. 2019; 253: 722-730. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2019.05.029.
[19] Wang Y, Low ZX, Kim S, Zhang H, Chen X, Hou J, Seong JG, Lee YM, Simon GP, Davies
CH. Functionalized boron nitride nanosheets: A thermally rearranged polymer
nanocomposite membrane for hydrogen separation. Angewandte Chemie. 2018; 130(49):
16288-16293. https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.201809126.
[20] Wang B, Zheng Y, Zhang J, Zhang W, Zhang F, Xing W, Zhou R. Separation of light gas
mixtures using zeolite SSZ-13 membranes. Microporous and Mesoporous Materials. 2019;
275: 191-199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micromeso.2018.08.032.
[21] Xu G, Meng Z, Liu Y, Guo X, Deng K, Ding L, Lu R. Porous MOF‐205 with multiple
modifications for efficiently storing hydrogen and methane as well as separating carbon
dioxide from hydrogen and methane. International Journal of Energy Research. 2019;
43(13): 7517-7528. https://doi.org/10.1002/er.4631.
[22] Al-Naddaf Q, Thakkar H, Rezaei F. Novel zeolite-5A@ MOF-74 composite adsorbents
with core–shell structure for H2 purification. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. 2018;
10(35): 29656-29666. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.8b10494.
[23] Ge L, Zhou W, Du A, Zhu Z. Porous polyethersulfone-supported zeolitic imidazolate
framework membranes for hydrogen separation. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C.
2012; 116(24): 13264-13270. https://doi.org/10.1021/jp3035105.
[24] Jin H, Wollbrink A, Yao R, Li Y, Caro J, Yang W. A novel CAU-10-H MOF membrane
for hydrogen separation under hydrothermal conditions. Journal of Membrane Science.
2016; 513: 40-46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.memsci.2016.04.017.
[25] Delgado JA, Águeda V, Uguina M, Sotelo J, Brea P, Grande CA. Adsorption and diffusion
of H2, CO, CH4, and CO2 in BPL activated carbon and 13X zeolite: evaluation of
performance in pressure swing adsorption hydrogen purification by simulation. Industrial
& Engineering Chemistry Research. 2014; 53(40): 15414-15426.
https://doi.org/10.1021/ie403744u.
[26] Delgado JA, Agueda VI, Uguina MA, Sotelo, Brea P. Hydrogen recovery from off-gases
with nitrogen-rich impurity by pressure swing adsorption using CaX and 5A zeolites.
Adsorption. 2015; 21(1-2): 107-123. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10450-015-9654-z.
[27] He Y, Ford ME, Zhu M, Liu Q, Tumuluri U, Wu Z, Wachs IE. Influence of catalyst
synthesis method on selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NO by NH3 with V2O5-
WO3/TiO2 catalysts. Applied Catalysis B: Environmental. 2016; 193: 141-150.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apcatb.2016.04.022.
[28] Tiwari D, Bhunia H, Bajpai PK. Adsorption of CO2 on KOH activated, N-enriched carbon
derived from urea formaldehyde resin: kinetics, isotherm and thermodynamic studies.
Applied Surface Science. 2018; 439: 760-771.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2017.12.203.
[29] Magnowski NBK, Avila AM, Lin CCH, Shi M, Kuznicki SM. Extraction of ethane from
natural gas by adsorption on modified ETS-10. Chemical Engineering Science. 2011; 66(8):
1697-1701. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ces.2011.01.005. 
[30] Mitxelena I, Piris M. Molecular electric moments calculated by using natural orbital
functional theory. The Journal of Chemical Physics. 2016; 144(20): 204108.
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4951685.
[31] Rezaei H, Rahmati M, Modarress H. Application of ANFIS and MLR models for prediction
of methane adsorption on X and Y faujasite zeolites: effect of cations substitution. Neural
Computing and Applications. 2017; 28(2): 301-312. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00521-015-
2057-y.
[32] Vidoni A, Ravikovitch PI, Afeworki M, Calabro D, Deckman H, Ruthven D. Adsorption of
CO2 on high silica MFI and DDR zeolites: Structural defects and differences between
adsorbent samples. Microporous and Mesoporous Materials. 2020; 294: 109818.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micromeso.2019.109818.
[33] Wang X, Zeng S, Wang J, Shang D, Zhang X, Liu J, Zhang Y. Selective separation of
hydrogen sulfide with pyridinium-based ionic liquids. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry
Research. 2018; 57(4): 1284-1293. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.iecr.7b04477.
[34] Pham TD, Lobo RF. Adsorption equilibria of CO2 and small hydrocarbons in AEI-, CHA-,
STT-, and RRO-type siliceous zeolites. Microporous and Mesoporous Materials. 2016; 236:
100-108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micromeso.2016.08.025.
[35] Liu G, Tian P, Li J, Zhang D, Zhou F, Liu Z. Synthesis, characterization and catalytic
properties of SAPO-34 synthesized using diethylamine as a template. Microporous and
Mesoporous Materials. 2008; 111:143-149.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micromeso.2007.07.023.