Design and proof of concept of a continuous pressurized multi-stage fluidized bed setup for deep sour gas removal using adsorption

Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) processes are frequently used in the (petro)chemical industry, but they suffer from ineffective use of the sorbent and slow heat transfer. A pressurized multi-stage fluidized bed (MSFB) for continuous PSA is proposed in this work to overcome these drawbacks. A one stage fluidized bed adsorber was used to determine minimum fluidization velocities of the used amine sorbent at various pressures up to 10 bara. The design of a pilot scale experimental setup is described, together with supporting experiments to show the proof of concept. Removal from 37,000 mol ppm CO₂ to <10 mol ppm CO₂ in a few seconds was demonstrated in the pressurized MSFB adsorber. The tray efficiencies were high: often larger than 0.85. Using a numerical particle model, it was concluded that the CO₂ adsorption rate is controlled via intraparticle mass transfer.