Gas separation adsorbents and manufacturing method

摘要

The present invention generally relates to high rate adsorbents and a method for their manufacture involving the steps of component mixing, extrusion, spheronization and calcination. The component mixing can involve both dry mixing in addition to wet mixing of an adsorbent with a binder, if required, and a fluid such as water. The paste so formed from the mixing stage is extruded to produce pellets which are optionally converted to beads by spheronization using in one embodiment, a marumerizer. The product is harvested and calcined to set any binder or binders used and/or burn out any additives or processing aids. This basic manufacturing scheme can be augmented by extra processing steps including ion exchange and activation to alter the composition of the adsorbents, as required.

主权项

1. A process for making a high mass transfer rate LiX adsorbent for gas separation comprising the steps of:
(a) dry mixing a type X zeolite powder, a binder materials and, optionally, one or more additive materials; (b) adding a fluid to the dry-mixed materials to form an extrudable paste; (c) extruding the paste at pressures less than 500 psi to form pellets or strands of adsorbent; (d) spheronizing the pellets or strands to form beads of adsorbent; (e) calcinizing the adsorbent beads; and (f) performing a lithium ion exchange to form a LiX adsorbent bead;wherein the resulting extruded pellets or strands of step (c) and the spheronized beads of step (d) have a specific size-compensated relative rate (SCRR) greater than 1.2 mmol-mm2/g-sec and porosity in the range of 45-53%.