Dr. Garrett Lau of Air Products, Inc.

Dr. Garrett Lau, Research Scientist at Air Products, Inc. will present

"Argon purification using Rho zeolite in a rapid cycle PSA"

on April 24, 2019 at 4:10pm in Neville Hall, Room 3

Argon, used in steel, electronics, and glass manufacturing industries, is concentrated and separated from air by cryogenic distillation. Final purification to remove low levels of oxygen is difficult due to the similar size and boiling points of O2 and Ar. Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) methods to purify argon provide potentially low capital systems. However, the best commercially available adsorbents for this process, carbon molecular sieves (CMS), are limited to relatively low argon recovery.

Recently, small pore zeolites have demonstrated kinetic separations of gas molecules of similar size through highly flexible and tunable frameworks. Here we discuss how choice of extra-framework cations in Rho zeolite can dramatically enhance the rate of O2 uptake while maintaining slow kinetics for Ar adsorption. Maximizing the performance of Rho requires a rapid cycle kinetic PSA process. We show that the unique rate and selectivity of these materials, used in a rapid cycle process, results in superior productivity and recovery vs. CMS based Ar PSA.