Analysis of a new methodology applied to the desorption of natural gas in activated carbon vessels

The presented work performs a numerical investigation of natural gas desorption process in activated carbon vessels. The numerical results show that increasing the inlet temperature of gas increases the desorption of the adsorbed material. It also observed that the desorption time is a function of the applied pressure drop. For the investigated cases of the presented work, the desorption time varied from 250 s to 600 s. It is proposed that in order to reduce the negative effects of the heat of adsorption to the process, one fraction of desorbed gas must be circulated in an external heat exchange to use the energy of exhaustion gas to increase the gas's inlet temperature. This approach avoids the use of additional devices to the system, such as external heating jackets and fins that increase the complexity of the system. •The desorption of natural gas in activated carbon is investigated.•A 1D model based on mass and energy for pellets and column is investigated.•A numerical code was developed to analyze the dynamics of discharge.•The effect of regeneration temperature and pressure drop on desorption process is investigated.