Adsorption of sulfur dioxide from pseudo binary mixtures on hydrophobic zeolites: Modeling of the breakthrough curves

The adsorption of SO2 from pseudo binary mixtures with water and CO2 on hydrophobic zeolites (MFI and MOR type) was investigated using the breakthrough curve method. The SO2 and water breakthrough curves were compared with theoretical ones based on an axially dispersed plug flow through the column and the linear driving force rate equation. In addition, different semi-predictive multi-component equilibrium equations were used for the breakthrough modeling: Langmuir 1, Langmuir 2 and Langmuir-Freundlich extended models. The overall mass transfer coefficients were derived by matching theoretical with experimental breakthrough curves for single component systems, i.e., water vapor or SO2 in a carrier gas. They were also predicted from a simplified bi-porous adsorbent model and compared with experimentally derived values. The presence of CO2 species in ternary mixtures with water vapor and SO2, even at relatively high concentrations of 9 vol%, had no significant effect on the breakthrough behavior of the other two species. For that reason the CO2 species was ignored in the analysis of the resulting pseudo binary mixtures. The breakthrough model was solved by finite element orthogonal collocation method using the commercial software gPROMS. Both extended Langmuir 1 and Langmuir 2 based models gave reasonable predictions of the water and SO2 breakthrough curves for pseudo binary mixtures involving a mordenite sample for all water concentration levels used in this study (up to 3.5 vol%). However, the same models were successfully used to predict SO2 breakthrough curves for a MFI sample only at low water concentrations, i. e., 1.5 vol%. At the higher water levels both models failed to describe equilibrium behavior in the MFI sample due to the introduction of multi- layer adsorption in the interstices between small MFI- 26 crystals.