Optimizing purity and recovery of hydrogen from syngas by equalized pressure swing adsorption using palm kernel shell activated carbon adsorbent

This paper provides with a first assessment on the sustainability of Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) as a valid option for Carbon Dioxide (CO2) capture in power plant. PSA is a well-established gas separation technique in air separation, gas purification and CO2 capturing. The PSA system involved adsorption process which the adsorbent play an extremely important in gas separation. The adsorbent must be porous and preferably having a large surface area per unit mass. Activated Palm kernel activated carbon (APKS) has been used in this study for binary mixture gas separation involved Carbon dioxide and Hydrogen (CO2/H2), the characterization study reveals that the specific surface area of the prepared adsorbent is around 697.67m²/g with pore volume and pore size of 0.35m3/g and 2.01nm respectively. The average particle size of the adsorbent sample is recorded as 0.11µm. Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis uncovers the spongy structure of the highly amorphous ACPKS. Breakthrough studies at varying adsorption pressure were executed and 3 bar adsorption pressure is chosen for the subsequent optimization study. The PSA study which operated at the optimum operating condition yielded hydrogen purity of up to 99.978% with recovery of 80.014%.