Modeling the heat and mass transfers in temperature-swing adsorption of volatile organic compounds onto activated carbons.

A theoretical model was built to simulate the adsorption of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) onto activated carbons in a fixed bed. This model was validated on a set of experimental data obtained for the adsorption of acetone, ethyl formate, and dichloromethane onto five commercial activated carbons. The influence of operating conditions was modeled with various VOC contents atthe inlet of the adsorber and superficial velocities of the gas-phase from 0.14 to 0.28 m.s(-1). Breakthrough times and maximum temperature rises were computed with a coefficient of determination of 0.988 and 0.901, respectively. The simulation was then extended to the adsorption of mixtures of VOCs. From the comparison of simulation and experimental results, the advantage of accounting for dispersions of heat and mass is shown and the importance in taking into account the temperature effect on the equilibrium data is demonstrated.