Applicability of Commercial Adsorbents to Multi-column Adsorption Systems with Condenser for Tritiated Water Vapor Removal

In a previous paper, two types of multi-column adsorption system with condenser for removal of tritiated atmospheric moisture were proposed and the system performance was estimated by analyzing the necessary amount of adsorbent for columns. The analysis revealed that the necessary amount depends on the types of adsorption isotherm for water vapor on candidate adsorbents. In this paper, the applicability of commercial adsorbents to the systems is examined with respect to their empirical isotherms and then the following results are shown. The synthetic zeolites Molecular Sieves 4A and 5A, the Langmuir type, are recommendable for the proposed systems. The systems with the zeolites can carry out the cyclic adsorption process in economical use of adsorbent packed in each column with an enough margin of operational condition. The necessary amounts are dependent on the process moisture concentration but almost independent of adsorption temperature. Activated alumina, the BET type, is also applicable but is not so useful as the synthetic zeolites, because the necessary amount of activated alumina is large compared with the synthetic zeolites and is sensitively affected by adsorption temperature.