Study the separation process of propane /propylene mixture using Cu-MOF-74 metal- organic framework

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Gas Engineering Dep., Ahwaz Faculty of Petroleum, Petroleum University of Technology, Ahwaz, Iran

2 Gas Engineering Dept., Ahwaz Faculty of Petroleum, Petroleum University of Technology

3 Gas Engineering Dep., Ahwaz Faculty of Petroleum, Petroleum University of Technology, Ahvaz, Iran

Abstract

In this work, adsorptive separation of propane/ propylene mixture using Cu-MOF-74 metal-organic framework was studied. For this, a fixed-bed adsorption column was designed and constructed to investigate the performance of the synthesized adsorbate under continuous flow condition. Then, the adsorption and desorption of propane/ propylene mixture (25/75) at 303 K and 3 bar was experimentally measured. By using Aspen Adsorption™ software and employing experimental isotherm data of propane and propylene, the separation process in the fixed-bed adsorber was simulated. After validation of simulation results by using experimental breakthrough curves, vacuum pressure swing adsorption (VPSA) process was simulated in order to estimate the important parameters such as product purity, recovery and productivity. Obtained results show that the software could predict the experimental data with the high accuracy and capability. Moreover, by using Cu-MOF-74 it is possible to separate propylene from propane with productivity of 2.36 mol/kg.h and propylene purity up to 99.5%.

Keywords

Main Subjects