Characterization of adsorption of select organic gases on activated carbon fiber cloth

A bench-scale system was developed to capture, recover, and condense low concentration organic gases using activated carbon fiber cloth and electrothermal desorption with post-desorption liquefaction using compression and cooling. The gas recovery system will improve the economics of industrial processes that emit low concentration organic gases, which could be reused if they were captured and recovered. To better understand the adsorption characteristics of the bench-scale gas recovery system, adsorption isotherms were measured for three industrially relevant compounds, i.e., dichioromethane, isobutane, and R134A (1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane). The isotherms followed Type-I behavior. The isosteric heat of adsorption for isobutane ranged from 58.2 to 85.3 kJ/mole. The results will be used to better understand the energy distribution in the gas recovery system. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 105th AWMA Annual Conference and Exhibition 2012 (San Antonio, TX 6/19-22/2012).