• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
• /
• v.53 no.1
• /
• pp.31-38
• /
• 2015

At present, carbon dioxide ($CO_2$) emission, which causes global warming, is a major issue all over the world. To reduce $CO_2$ emission directly, commercial deployment of $CO_2$ separation processes has been attempted in industrial plants, such as power plant, oil refinery and steelmaking plant. Besides, several studies have been done on indirect reduction of $CO_2$ emission from recycle of reducing gas (carbon monoxide or hydrogen containing gas) in the plants. Unlike many competing gas separation technologies, pressure swing adsorption (PSA) and membrane filtration are commercially used together or individually to separate a single component from the gas mixture. However, there are few studies on operation of sequential separation process of multi-component gas which has more than two target gas products. In this paper, process simulation model is first developed for two available configurations: $CO_2$ PSA-CO PSA-$H_2$ PSA and $CO_2$ PSA-CO PSA-$H_2$ membrane. Operation optimization and economic evaluation of the processes are also performed. As a result, feed gas contains about 14% of $H_2$ should be used as fuel than separating $H_2$, and $CO_2$ separation should be separated earlier than CO separation when feed gas contains about 30% of $CO_2$ and CO. The simulation results can help us to find an optimal process configuration and operation condition for separation of multicomponent gas with $CO_2$, CO, $H_2$ and other gases.