Fabrication Of Honeycomb Wall-Flow Micro Packed Bed And Application In PSA Process

A novel configuration of packed reactor-honeycomb micro packed bed (HMPB) was proposed in the paper. The fabrication methods, flow characteristics of HMPB were investigated, which also applied as an exploration for the carbon capture in Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) process. HMPB possessed the advantages of both the radial flow reactor and the monolithic reactor. There were multiple distributed network channels, which could be understood as numerous micro radial reactors inside the bed. That means HMPB could greatly shorten the flow path and reduce the pressure drop when compared with the common packed bed. Unlike the monolithic reactor, HMPB allowed smaller particles packed inside the micro network channels, which could improve the loading capacity and efficiency of catalysts. The major work of this paper were as follows:1. Fabrication of honeycomb ceramics was studied and different configuration of honeycomb ceramics skeleton were fabricated by extrusion molding. Furthermore, diverse arrangements of glue injection blocked the micro channels were investigated as well as the effects of pore forming materials and sintering process on the wall permeability and structural strength. Through attempts to adjust the composition of raw materials and optimal contents of selected pore forming materials, the honeycomb ceramics with high permeability and structural strength were fabricated in proper sintering process.2. The cold model experiment was set up to study the flow status in HMPB of three different configurations (Ⅰ,Ⅱ,Ⅲ), including the fluid distribution and resistance time distribution. Results showed that the pressure drop HMPB was lower and even flow distribution indicated the uniform loading of the bed. Besides, the residence time distribution proved configuration Ⅰ,Ⅱ were close to plug flow. Backing-mixing of configuration Ⅲ was higher since the heat conduction material were inserted into the bed, which aimed to improve the overall thermal conductivity.3. Application of HMPB in carbon capture PSA process was studied. A micro packed adsorption bed was fabricated through packed the adsorbents inside in the same method mentioned above. Effect of pressure, feed flow, feed concentration on dynamic adsorption capacity in micro packed adsorption bed were investigated in CO2-N2 mixed gas system. Also included the effect of regeneration methods of adsorbents on adsorption performance in continuous cycles of dynamic adsorption. Above all, experiments and relevant mathematic model results indicated that HMPB was the appropriate structure of packed bed and of great potential in industrial application.