Oxygen enriched combustion system performance study

Abstract

The current study was undertaken to evaluate the performance of a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) oxygen plant to provide oxygen for industrial combustion applications. PSA oxygen plants utilize a molecular sieve material to separate air into an oxygen rich product stream and a nitrogen rich exhaust stream. These plants typically produce 90-95% purity oxygen and are located in close proximity to the point of use. In contrast, high purity (99.999%) oxygen is produced by the distillation of liquid air at a remote plant and is usually transported to the point of use either as a cryogenic liquid in a tank trailer or as a high pressure gas via pipeline. In this study, experiments were performed to the test PSA system used in conjunction with an A'' burner and comparisons were made with the results of the previous study which utilized high purity liquid oxygen. 4 refs., 6 figs., 6 tabs.