Energy Efficiency of Oxygen Enriched Air Production Technologies: Cryogeny vs Membranes

Abstract Oxygen Enriched Air (OEA) is used in numerous chemical, medical and industrial applications (e.g. combustion enhancement for natural gas furnaces, coal gasification). More recently, it attracted attention for hybrid carbon capture processes. Membrane separation has shown growing interest for OEA production, providing an alternative to conventional air separation processes such as cryogenic distillation and pressure swing adsorption. Nevertheless, based on the current polymeric materials performances, membranes are usually considered to be competitive only for medium O2 purity (25-40%) and small scale plants (10-25 tons/day). Improvement in membrane materials permeability and permselectivity (O2 over N2) is often reported to be a critical issue in order to increase the attainable O2 purity and to make the process more energy efficient. Recently, several membrane materials have been reported to show performances far above the permeability/selectivity trade-off of dense polymers. In this study, the potential of current and prospective membrane materials to achieve OEA production thanks to a single stage process is analysed through a rigorous simulation approach. The two processes (membrane and cryogenic distillation) are critically compared in terms of energy efficiency (kWh/ton O2), depending on O2 purity and on membrane material selectivity levels.

[1]  David Willson,et al.  An energetic analysis of CO2 capture on a gas turbine combining flue gas recirculation and membrane separation , 2011 .

[2]  Stephen L. Matson,et al.  Membrane oxygen enrichment : II. Economic assessment , 1986 .

[3]  S. D. Jenkins,et al.  Permeability of N2, Ar, He, O2 and CO2 through biaxially oriented polyester films - dependence on free volume , 2001 .

[4]  Bruce A. Finlayson.  Introduction to Chemical Engineering Computing: Finlayson/Introduction to Chemical Engineering Computing , 2006 .

[5]  Roda Bounaceur,et al.  A hybrid process combining oxygen enriched air combustion and membrane separation for post-combustion carbon dioxide capture , 2009 .

[6]  S. G. Kimura,et al.  Membrane oxygen enrichment , 1986 .

[7]  Stephen L. Matson,et al.  Liquid membranes for the production of oxygen-enriched air: II. Facilitated-transport membranes , 1987 .

[8]  H. Ettouney,et al.  Separation characteristics of air by polysulfone hollow fiber membranes in series , 1998 .

[9]  L. Robeson,et al.  The upper bound revisited , 2008 .

[10]  Young Moo Lee,et al.  Carbon molecular sieve membranes derived from thermally labile polymer containing blend polymers and their gas separation properties , 2004 .

[11]  R. Mahajan,et al.  Pushing the limits on possibilities for large scale gas separation: which strategies? , 2000 .

[12]  Jinyue Yan,et al.  Optimization of Cryogenic CO2 Purification for Oxy-coal Combustion☆ , 2013 .

[13]  George P. Sakellaropoulos,et al.  Simulation of multicomponent gas separation in a hollow fiber membrane by orthogonal collocation — hydrogen recovery from refinery gases , 2000 .

[14]  Hayato Hagi,et al.  Energy Efficiency of Oxygen Enriched Air Production Technologies: Cryogeny vs Membranes , 2014 .

[15]  S. A. Stern,et al.  A new evaluation of membrane processes for the oxygen-enrichment of air. I, Identification of optimum operating conditions and process configuration , 1991 .