Energy efficiency during capture and recovery of organic gases with activated carbon fiber cloth, electrothermal swing adsorption, and post-desorption treatment

A bench-scale system was developed to capture, recover, and condense low concentration organic gases using activated carbon fiber cloth (ACFC) and electrothermal swing adsorption with post-desorption liquefaction using compression and cooling. The bench-scale system was tested with isobutane to determine the mass collection efficiency and energy requirements for recovering liquid isobutane from an air stream containing 2000 ppmv isobutane. Using different ACFC desorption temperatures (150°, 175°, 200°C), results showed that isobutane could be captured and recovered with > 99.4% efficiency, independent of this range of temperature. The energy required to capture and recover isobutane increased with increasing ACFC desorption temperature and ranged from 1800-2000 kJ/mole recovered. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 104th AWMA Annual Conference and Exhibition 2011 (Orlando, FL 6/21-24/2011).