Adsorption of gas mixtures in compliant activated carbons

V.CORNETTE,J.C.A. OLIVEIRA, R.H. LÓPEZ, C.L. CAVALCANTE JR, D.C.S. AZEVEDO, G. ZGRABLICH

Paris

Workshop; Workshop on Adsorption in Compliant Solids; 2011

Centre national de la recherche scientifique-CNRS

Understanding the adsorption-induced deformation of microporous solids (e.g., activated carbons, charcoals, and coals) is one of the long-standing problems in adsorption science and catalysis.The deformation effects observed for compliant mesoporous materials amount up to 50% relative volume change upon capillary condensation, while the magnitude of the adsorption induced macroscopic strain due to micropore filling is usually on the order of 10-3 to 10-4. Although these are very small changes only, the local deformation can largely affect the adsorption kinetics, e.g., in terms of a change in pore openings, resulting in highly selective gate effects. In addition, the sensitivity of the deformation on the pore size provides a complementary approach to probe micropore size distributions.The separation of CO2 from CO2-CH4 mixtures is an important issue in natural gas and biogas purification/upgrading for energy generation applications. The adequate design of such processes depends on the knowledge of the behavior of multicomponent adsorption, particularly that of CO2-CH4 mixtures.