Abstract
Models for gas separations with spiral-wound membranes are developed and found to exhibit good agreement with experiments performed on N2/O2 mixtures. The two-dimensional (2D) model can be accurately approximated by a one-dimensional (1D) surrogate model when the spacer widths are chosen to make the channel pressure drops small. Subsequently, the separation of propane/propylene mixtures from the recycle purge stream of a polypropylene reactor is investigated. Assuming ideal gas is found to lead to significant overestimations in membrane stage cuts (sometimes more than 10%), an extent comparable to that associated with extrapolating constant olefin permeance from a low-pressure condition. While olefin permeance can change significantly with pressure, using a constant-permeance formulation can result in a small (< 2.5%) underprediction in stage cut if the value for the permeance is taken from the feed condition. Finally, membrane properties and costs necessary for a viable separation process are discussed.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | e16274 |
Journal | AIChE Journal |
Volume | 66 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 1 2020 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This material is primarily supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficient and Renewable Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office under Award Number DE‐EE000788, and also by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences under Award Number DE‐FG02‐17ER16362. The authors acknowledge the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute at the University of Minnesota (UMN) for providing computational resources that contributed to this work. R. F. D. thanks P. Constantino, C. Parrish, and M. Palys (UMN) for helpful conversations on finite‐difference techniques, T. Yang for discussions on P‐R EOS, and the reviewers for their helpful comments.
Funding Information:
This material is primarily supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Energy Efficient and Renewable Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office under Award Number DE-EE000788, and also by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences under Award Number DE-FG02-17ER16362. The authors acknowledge the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute at the University of Minnesota (UMN) for providing computational resources that contributed to this work. R. F. D. thanks P. Constantino, C. Parrish, and M. Palys (UMN) for helpful conversations on finite-difference techniques, T. Yang for discussions on P-R EOS, and the reviewers for their helpful comments.
Funding Information:
U.S. Department of Energy Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Chemical Sciences, Geosciences and Biosciences, Grant/Award Number: DE‐FG02‐17ER16362; U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficient and Renewable Energy's Advanced Manufacturing Office, Grant/Award Number: DE‐EE000788 Funding information
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Institute of Chemical Engineers
Keywords
- Membrane separations
- computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
- design (process simulation)
- gas purification
- mathematical modeling