• Environmental Engineering Research
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.169-174
• /
• 2017

Vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) is a promising treatment method for volatile organic compounds (VOCs). This study focuses on a VSA process for regenerating activated carbon spent with VOCs, and then investigates its adsorption capacities. Toluene was selected as the test VOC molecule, and the VSA regeneration experiments results were compared to the thermal swing adsorption process. Cyclic adsorption-desorption experiments were performed using a lab-scale apparatus with commercial activated carbon (Samchully Co.). The VSA regeneration was performed in air (0.5 L/min) at 363.15 K and 13,332 Pa. The comparative results depicted that in terms of VSA regeneration, it was found that after the fifth regeneration, about a 90% regeneration ratio was maintained. These experiments thus confirm that the VSA regeneration process has good recovery while operating at low temperatures (363.15 K) and 13,332 Pa.

• Clean Technology
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.421-428
• /
• 2017

In this study, we have investigated the characteristics of adsorption and desorption of toluene, methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) and their binary component using activated carbon. The BET analysis was performed to identify the characteristics of the activated carbon, and the desorption characteristics with temperature were examined to find out an optimum desorption temperature. Ten cyclic experiments of adsorption-desorption were performed, where each adsorption temperature was maintained at room temperature and desorption temperature at upto $120^{\circ}C$. In case of single component cyclic test, the efficiencies of adsorption and desorption decreased as the cycle increased. MEK which has lower affinity with activated carbon than toluene showed lower efficiencies of adsorption and desorption. In case of binary component cyclic test, a typical roll-up phenomenon was observed during adsorption process, where MEK reaches at breakpoint first and then was swept out by toluene.