Experiments Investigation On Miniature Pressure Swing Adsorption For Oxygen-generating Device

The gas separating technology of PSA (Pressure Swing Adsorption) has beendeveloped maturely and wisely used, and the technology also has a wide applicationmarket in miniaturization oxygen-generator.This paper introduced the principle, the characteristics, and the research developmentof PSA for oxygen gas both at home and abroad in detail, and introduced the investigationdevelopment and application of miniature PSA oxygen-generation devices in brief.Experiments on PSA for oxygen gas device have been carried out, to research theinfluence of oxygen generation technology under different pressure equalization styles:up-down pressure equalization style, cross style, up style and down style. To investigatethe different producing oxygen gas result and energy consumption under the four kinds ofpressure equalization styles. The results are:(1) Oxygen concentration of the gas in absorption column’outlet is much higher thanthat in the absorption column’inlet, taking the gas from the outlet of the absorption columnhelp promote oxygen concentration of product, when conducting pressure equalization.(2) All four kinds of pressure equalization styles can help improve oxygenconcentration, the up equalization style and up-down equalization style have advantage inimproving oxygen concentration rapidly, and their maximum oxygen concentration go tobeyond92%; Pressure equalization styles is the influential factor when making oxygengas.(3) The up equalization style and up-down pressure equalization styles also havesuperiority in energy consumption, the energy-saving rate reaches40%or more.A miniature VPSA for oxygen gas device was made up by adding severalimplementors to the original miniature PSA oxygen-generating device. The PLC(Programmable Logic Controller) programs which is consistent with the miniature VPSAfor oxygen equipment have been created, vast experiments executed to investigate how thevacuum factor influence the performance, energy consumption and cost of oxygengeneration under the laboratory condition. This paper designed an orthogonal array with five factors and four levels. Four factors are oxygen drained time, purge time, pressureequalization time and vacuum desorption time, the miniature VPSA experimentsconducted to investigate how the factors affect oxygen-generating result and theinteraction between the factors. Here are the experiment results:(1) Oxygen drained factor, vacuum desorption factor are the noticeable influentialfactor, pressure equalization factor affects the energy more apparently, and the purgefactor is not a noticeable effect on oxygen gas generation.(2)When adsorption pressure increases, the output of product gas with the oxygenconcentration over90%will enlarge, and the energy consumption and cost reduced, butthe maximum oxygen concentration increased first and then decreased, the upmost oxygenconcentration was94.7%under0.29MPa.(3) Vacuum desorption can accelerate the oxygen concentration increasing speed, butcannot increase the maximum oxygen concentration(4) Vacuum desorption operation can get a high oxygen concentration and increaseproduct output with the oxygen concentration beyond90%, and reduce the oxygen energyconsumption; It also has a very good application value in miniature oxygen equipment.