Self-regenerative rapid thermal swing adsorption process using structured fiber sorbents for energy-efficient H2O removal

Abstract

Rapid thermal swing adsorption (RTSA) using hollow fiber sorbents (HFSs) is an emerging separation process that enables significant energy savings. Herein, we propose a self-regenerative RTSA process based on multi-modules of zeolite-13X-impregnated HFSs for energy-efficient H2O removal in various chemical processes. The proposed dehumidification process consumes almost 82% lower energy than the conventional adsorption counterpart for H2O removal because it uses a combination of high heat transfer efficiency and self-regeneration. The steam recovered from the desorption process can be combined with the thermal fluid for H2O desorption from the HFSs, which is referred to as the self-regenerative RTSA process. In addition, the residual sensible heat emitted from the desorption process can be internally integrated into the heating process, which reduces both the sensible heat of the HFSs and desorption heat of H2O. Consequently, the energy evaluation revealed that the newly proposed self-regenerative RTSA process required a total energy of ca. 0.68 GJ t-H2O-1 for H2O adsorption with a heat integration efficiency of 80%. The current work successfully demonstrates an extended application of the RTSA process for dehumidification.