The oil bath thermal cycling absorption process design and separation process research

Abstract

Thermal cycling absorption process (TCAP) has been developed for years to support the separation of hydrogen isotopes, which has the characteristics of high separation efficiency and high recovery rate. The design of separation column structure, heating and cooling (H&C) system and technological parameters are the basis of TCAP technical process study and are the key points of TCAP engineering research. In this work, an improved separation system has been designed and built based on an oil bath H&C system for the first time. The separation column in this facility is 45 m long and the packing weight in the column is up to 8 kg. The separation experiments were carried out based on this facility, and the process parameters were adjusted according to the size of the separation column, which proved the superior performance of this facility. The separation experiments show that for 50% D2 - 50% H2 feed gas, the deuterium abundance can reach to 99% and the steady state extraction can be realized in production mode with the processing capacity over 400 standard L per day. Another experiment has been carried out with 1% D2 - 99% H2 feed gas, and the deuterium abundance exceeded 10%, verifying the separation ability at low abundance deuterium feed gas. Furthermore, the extraction rate can reach to 25% column capacity when the deuterium abundance in production gas is 5%.