International Journal of Energy Research, Vol.44, No.8, 6555-6566, 2020
Effect of pressure equalization on methane enrichment from stranded natural gas using PSA with amorphous Kenaf and microporous palm kernel shell adsorbents
Improvement of quality fuels has gained traction as a result of growing demand for higher quality fuels because of health concern, environmental issues and tighter emission control by regulatory bodies. Low quality, unprocessed fuels produce household air pollution on burning that can be fatal. In this work, Kenaf and palm kernel adsorbents were used in pressure swing adsorption to enrich methane from stranded natural gas containing extraordinarily high carbon dioxide content of 70 vol%. Microporous palm kernel activated carbon from this work was found effective in methane enrichment process to produce better quality fuel that met the gas pipeline quality standard. Methane with 85.0% purity and 94.2% recovery was achieved at 1 minute of adsorption time due to the methane flow-through and effective carbon dioxide retention. Increased adsorption time of higher than 1 minute resulted in the reduction of both purity and recovery of the gases due to the delayed cross-over of methane. Methane compression at three bars consumed 10.0 kJ/min out of 33.0 kJ/min. Methane expansion released 8.0 and 2.0 kJ/min from methane and carbon dioxide rich stream, respectively during blowdown. The total entropy change from the compression and expansion of the gas was nil, suggesting that the process induced no disorder to the surrounding. Pressure swing adsorption with equalization mode reduced the methane purity to 76% and carbon dioxide recovery to 70% but increased the methane recovery to almost 100% and carbon dioxide purity to 97% in a criss-cross procession.