Research Subject: Modeling the Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) process in Kavian Petrochemical, which is used for hydrogen purification
Research Approach: In this research, PSA process and structural optimizations on hydrogen quality using process modeling by the Rung-kutta gill method using MATLAB software were innovatively carried out for the first time in Iran for the Kavian Petrochemical Olefin Unit, and for the first time, process optimization was simulated to increase production efficiency.
Main Results: In order to investigate the effect of pressure on this process, the pressure of the adsorption stage was changed from 20 to 40 bar. The results showed that by increasing the pressure from 20 to 25 bar, the hydrogen purity increased by 0.53% and then decreased by 0.29% with further increase in pressure to 40 bar. Pressure changes also affected hydrogen recovery and productivity, with an increase in pressure from 20 to 40 bar resulting in a 51.27% decrease in hydrogen recovery and a 51.28% decrease in hydrogen productivity. Based on the simulation results, if high hydrogen purity is desired, the optimal pressure was determined to be 25 bar. However, if recovery and productivity are important, it is better to keep the pressure as low as possible because a 0.53% increase in hydrogen purity with increasing pressure means a decrease in hydrogen production of approximately 5 tons per ton of adsorbent per year. In order to validate the model, the modeling results were compared with industrial data. The results of this comparison show that the error between the modeling results and industrial data is very small, about one percent.