FAST-CYCLE PSA TECHNOLOGY FOR OXGEN GENERATION IN MILITARY APPLICATIONS

摘要

QuestAir Technologies is developing an extremely compact, proprietary Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA)technology that separates oxygen from air, and hydrogen from reformate. Conventional PSA systems arelimited first by their use of pelletized zeolite adsorbents, which have slow gas adsorption kinetics, high pressuredrop, and can fluidize causing attrition. These systems operate at less than ten preduction/purge cycles perminute. QuestAir has reformatted these same zeolites into structured adsorbents, which have fast kinetics, lowpressure drop passages, and fixed (bonded) adsorbent. These adsorbents are capable of operating at speedsover 150 cycles per minute, which leads to drastic reductions in system size. The second limitation ofconventional systems is their use of many independent switching valves to direct pressure and flow. QuestAirhas simplified the switching precess by using two small muHi-port switching valves with increased reliability.These valves increase the efficiency of the PSA process through the application of complex PSA cycles. Thispaper will outline how QuestAir's rapid cycle PSA technology can be applied in various applications of interest tothe military. These applications include deployable oxygen systems for field hospitals, on-board oxygengenerating systems for aircraft, power boost for diesel tank engines, shipboard oxygen generation systems,protection from battlefield contaminants, and fuel cell engine efficiency improvement.