Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) - Gas Generation System

The OXYSWING® PSA Gas Generators from NOXERIOR apply an optimised Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) process for the separation of either the oxygen in ambient air from the other gases.

An OXYSWING® PSA Oxygen Generator contains either two single adsorption vessels (Twin-Tower systems) or a series of modules of two adsorption vessels (Modular systems), where each vessel is filled with an appropriate molecular sieve.

The gas production process starts by pressurising one of the adsorption vessels with clean feed air. Before the equilibrium load is reached at the top of the adsorption bed, the feed air supply will be interrupted to prevent a break-through.

The adsorption vessels are alternatively loaded in order to guarantee a continuous product flow. If one adsorption vessel is loaded, simultaneously the other one is regenerated by a pressure decrease (desorption). The depressurisation required for regeneration is obtained by simply venting to the atmosphere.

Prior to the subsequent adsorption and desorption phase, a pressure equalization will take place between the adsorption vessels in order to preload the regenerated vessel by a gas rich in product.

Our PSA generators are able to produce nitrogen with a residual oxygen content from 10 ppm to 3,0 vol.%. Our PSA oxygen generators produce purities between 90 – 95 vol.% of oxygen.

Superior PSA Generator Technology from NOXERIOR

The NOXERIOR engineers have dedicated special attention to the adsorption vessel design in order to avoid fluidisation (moving) of the molecular sieve bed at any time during a complete PSA cycle of the OXYSWING® PSA Generators.

Extensive CFD simulations and prototype running tests were performed in order to remain distant from the physical fluidisation limit for each adsorption vessel size and under all process conditions.

Thanks to extensive in-house CFD and FEM simulations of process flows and mechanical designs, the NOXERIOR engineers also managed to develop the extremely compact gas distribution system FlatFlow® for the Modular PSA Generators. The FlatFlow® technology makes it possible to turn a horizontal feed gas flow into a vertical and uniformly distributed gas flow over the entire molecular sieve bed section within an extremely limited space. Despite these limited dimensions, the FlatFlow® technology even results in superior bed utilization compared to conventional gas distribution systems.

This break-through made it finally possible to develop a compact, highly efficient and truly flexible PSA generator for the production of oxygen. The NOXERIOR FlatFlow® technology is protected by several international patent applications.