Basic design package of a high-purity twin-bed N2-PSA-Plant

Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) is a widely applied technology for separating gases, which operates based on selective adsorption on solid adsorbents. Indeed, the demand of PSA process plants for nitrogen production on industrial scale is continuously growing, as consequence of the improvements achieved in terms of efficiency, competitiveness, and cost-effectiveness. In this work, the N2-PSA pilot plant located at the Münster University of Applied Sciences, was used as study-case for the drafting of the industrial-scale basic design package of the plant. Firstly, it was shown that it is acceptable to develop the basic design package of full-scale PSA system based on information obtained by operation of pilot-scale system. Subsequently, a detailed description of technical data of plant components has been given, according to the international and European standards in force. Therefore, it was possible to produce technical drawings of the plant, i.e. process flow diagram (PFD) and piping and instrumentation diagram (P&ID), along with the required datasheets and a preliminary plant layout. Eventually, a preliminary safety assessment of the system was carried out.