Study of AgLiLSX for Single-Stage High-Purity Oxygen Production

Commercial adsorbents do not exhibit argon/oxygen equilibrium selectivity above 1. However, in the past decade, Air Products and Chemicals developed an argon/oxygen selective silver-based zeolite, AgLiLSX. In this contribution, the authors studied and characterized the AgLiLSX adsorbent to provide fundamental data to evaluate its potential for high-purity oxygen production in a single-stage PSA unit. Oxygen, nitrogen, and argon adsorption isotherms and breakthroughs curves were obtained, and moderate equilibrium selectivity (αN2/O2 = 4.98 and αAr/O2 = 1.14 at 1 bar and 25 °C), high working capacity (0.45 mol·kg–1 for nitrogen, between 1.4 and 0.2 bar at 25 °C), and superior performance were observed. The authors concluded that this adsorbent can allow the production of a 95+% oxygen stream in a single-stage PSA operation.