Mathematical modeling of volatile organic compounds removal over
activated carbon
Abstract
Removal of volatile organic compounds (VOC) from air is essential due to
health issues. An industrial cyclic temperature swing adsorption (TSA)
unit is investigated over activated carbon. The comparison of industrial
data with that of model showed good agreement between them. The results
showed that ethanol is more adsorbed on activated carbon than diethyl
ether and outlet concentration of diethyl ether exceeds its inlet
concentration due to its partial replacement by ethanol. Performance of
the TSA unit is measured through calculating diethyl ether and ethanol
recoveries. Moreover, an energy requirement is also added into the model
and multi-objective optimization has been carried out. High model
accuracy of 99.98 % is obtained for objectives indicating a good
fitting. The suggested optimum variables wereduration of heating stepas
30min, duration of cooling stepas 20 min, regeneration flow rate of 400
kmol/h and humidity of 0.001 in air.