Adsorption characteristics of benzene–chlorobenzene vapor on hypercrosslinked polystyrene adsorbent and a pilot-scale application study

The benzene and chlorobenzene is the representative of VOCs and widely exist in the industrial waste gas. In this paper, the removal characteristics of benzene and chlorobenzene vapor using a microporous hypercrosslinked polystyrene adsorbent (HPsorbent) were studied. The HPsorbent had the similar equilibrium adsorption capacities for benzene and chlorobenzene vapors with commercial granular activated carbon (GAC). The breakthrough adsorption capacities of benzene and chlorobenzene in the single and binary vapor system were also investigated. Although there exist a competitive adsorption between benzene and chlorobenzene vapors on HPsorbent, benzene and chlorobenzene removals of above 99% in the both system was attained before significant breakthrough occurred. On the other hand, a pilot-scale experiment was carried out to investigate the effectiveness of using HPsorbent to remove benzene–chlorobenzene vapors mixture from industrial byproduct hydrogen chloride gas. The results show that the hydrogen chloride gas did not have an adverse effect on the adsorption of benzene and chlorobenzene. In sum, HPsorbent should be potentially an effective adsorbent for removal of benzene–chlorobenzene vapors not only from air stream but also from hydrogen chloride gas.