Adsorption of binary mixtures of propane-propylene in carbon molecular sieve 4A

We studied binary adsorption equilibrium and kinetics of propane and propylene in carbon molecular sieve 4A (Takeda Corp., Tokyo, Japan). Adsorption equilibrium was measured at 373 K with a manometric-Chromatographie unit at two different total pressures: 47 and 250 kPa. Equilibrium of the binary mixture was well predicted with the multicomponent multisite model equation based on pure gas data. The integral thermodynamic consistency test was applied to the set of data. Adsorption kinetics were measured in fixed-bed experiments at 343, 373, and 423 K with three different propylene molar fractions: 0.29, 0.55, and 0.80. The total pressure was also varied from 110 to 320 kPa. A temperature increase in the curves with high propylene molar fractions can be detrimental to the separation of propane-propylene mixtures by vacuum-pressure-swing adsorption.