Study on the Model for Predicting Gases Adsorption Equilibria above Critical Temperatures

Experimental adsorption isotherms of CH4 and N2 higher than critical temperatures on K02 activated carbon were measured with the volumetric method The pressure and temperature ranges were 0～12 MPa and 273～333 K respectively. A model, which took into account the adsorbate properties above critical temperatures and the adsorbent surface heterogeneity by pore size distribution, was proposed in this paper to predict the equilibrium data only using one adsorption isotherm. The gamma distribution was adopted to express the pore size distribution of the activated carbon, and the adsorption potential was calculated bythe 10-4-3 equation for slit shape micro pores. The relationships between the adsorbate density, the saturated adsorption amount and the equilibrium temperature have been discussed in detail. Through this method, the experimental adsorption data of CH4 and N2 were compared with the prediction equilibria. The study illustrates that the predicting method could present the adsorption equilibria accurately in the whole research range. And the mean relative deviations of the prediction of CH4 and N2 are only about 1.9% and 2.9%. This proves that the analyses of the adsorbate properties are reasonable. Inaddition, the model was applied to calculating the equilibrium data of various supercritical adsorption systems published in literatures. Despite different adsorbents and equilibriaconditions, the investigation results demonstrate that the suggested model performs well in predicting the gases adsorption equilibrium data with all mean relatived eviations less than 6.8%. Therefore, the model could be utilized to calculate the gases adsorption equilibrium data above critical temperatures in a wide range.