Concomitant adsorption and desorption of organic vapor in dry and humid air streams using microwave and direct electrothermal swing adsorption

Industrial gas streams can contain highly variable organic vapor concentrations that need to be processed before they are emitted to the atmosphere. Fluctuations in organic vapor concentrations make it more difficult to operate a biofilter when compared to a constant vapor concentration. Hence, there is a need to stabilize the concentration of rapidly fluctuating gas streams for optimum operation of biofilters. This paper describes new concomitant adsorption desorption (CAD) systems used with variable organic vapor concentration gas streams to provide the same gas stream, but at a user-selected constant vapor concentration that can then be more readily processed by a secondary air pollution control device such as a biofilter. The systems adsorb organic vapor from gas streams and simultaneously heat the adsorbent using microwave or direct electrothermal energy to desorb the organic vapor at a user-selected set-point concentration. Both systems depicted a high degree of concentration stabilization with a mean relative deviation between set-point and stabilized concentration of 0.3-0.4%. The direct electrothermal CAD system was also evaluated to treat a humid gas stream (relative humidity = 85%) that contained a variable organic vapor concentration. The high humidity did not interfere with CAD operation as water vapor did not adsorb but penetrated through the adsorbent. These results are important because they demonstrate the ability of CAD to effectively dampen concentration fluctuation in gas streams.