STORAGE OF NATURAL GAS

摘要

Natural gas is stored in a closed vessel under a pressure of about 1400 to 4500 kPa using a carbon molecular sieve adsorbent having at least 60 % of its particle pore volume as micropores having diameters greater than 0.4 nm and less than 2 nm, particularly 0.4 to 1.5 nm. The capacity of such micropores for methane is at least 0.095 g methane per g of carbon (at 300 psig or 2,169 kPa abs.). The deliverable volume of natural gas from a vessel packed with carbon molecular sieve particles is at least 70 times the volume of the vessel. The deliverable volume may be optimized by activating a carbonized polymer to increase the pore volume. Further increase in deliverable volume may be achieved by impregnating a polymer precursor of the carbon molecular sieve with additional monomers and polymerizing the monomers before carbonizing the precursor. Preferably, the capacity of the bed of adsorbent is increased by employing at least two sizes of adsorbent particles having nominal diameters differing by at least 7/1.