An investigation on the oxygen and nitrogen separation from air using carbonaceous adsorbents

Adsorption equilibria of pure oxygen and nitrogen were investigated in two different carbonaceous adsorbents such as activated carbons (acs) and multi- walled carbon nanotubes (mwcnts). to improve the surface characteristics of mwcnts for adsorption operations,the chemical pretreatment operations were performed. the equilibrium adsorption of oxygen and nitrogen on adsorbents were measured at different pressure values ranged from 0 to 50 bar at different temperatures. due to the different surface structures of these adsorbents,the selectivity was different. a comparison between the separation factors of mwcnts and acs showed that oxygen was adsorbed on mwcnts better than nitrogen. however,the lowest separation factor obtained was 2.7 for oxygen and nitrogen adsorption on chemically pretreated mwcnts demonstrating that the chemically pretreated mwcnts enhanced the preferential adsorption of oxygen to nitrogen. © school of engineering,taylor’s university.