Abstract
In this paper, a novel method is proposed to evaluate the performance of adsorbent material. "Sink efficiency" is used as a parameter to express the performance of an adsorbent placed in a gas flow channel. The sink efficiency varies from 0 (completely inert to the gas) to 1 (perfect sink). Different from conventional dynamic evaluation, the sink efficiency is a parameter that does not depend on the gas flow rate and can be easily obtained from the relationship between the removal efficiency and the gas flow rate, and from a simulation spreadsheet proposed before. The removal efficiency at various flow rate can be obtained from the sink efficiency, and it is valuable to design the removal column device. This method was applied to the removal of hydrogen sulfide by limonite, active carbon and gas adsorptive wall papers. Hydrogen sulfide was flowed through a channel, in which limonite was placed, and passed hydrogen sulfide was absorbed in an alkaline solution to be measured as un-adsorbed gas by flow injection analysis. Sink efficiencies were obtained from a plot of the removal efficiencies against the gas flow rate and the simulation program. According to the experiments, it was found that the limonite surface did not work as a perfect, sink and the sink efficiency decreased after use for the removal of hydrogen sulfide in a biogas generation plant. The performance of gas adsorbing is also discussed from the view point of micro-scale characteristics.
