Oxygen and methane enrichment — a comprison of module arrangements in gas permeation

Abstract

In the separation of gaseous mixtures by gas permeation, it is in some cases impossible to achieve the desired product quality in a single stage and, therefore, several stages may be necessary. Multistage processes can be implemented by membrane modules arranged in the form of a cascade or by a membrane column design. On the basis of an economic analysis, this paper discusses different possible module arrangements for 2 cases, i.e. the enrichment of oxygen from air and the separation of methane from biogas. Present calculations indicate that, in the first case, two-stage cascades with or without recycle and, in the second case, one-stage cascade without recycle constitute the optimum module arrangements. However, depending on the selling price of the methane enriched gas, one- or two-stage cascades with recycle have to be considered. Finally, It was shown that, in the permeation of non-ideal gases, the Joule-Thomson effect has to be taken into account.