In this work, two industrial dual-step pressure swing
adsorption
(PSA) processes were designed and simulated to obtain high-purity
methane, CO2, and syngas from a gas effluent of a CO2electroreduction reactor using different design configurations.
Among the set of zeolites that was investigated using Monte Carlo
and molecular dynamics simulations, NaX and MFI were the ones selected.
The dual-PSA process for case study 1 is only capable of achieving
a 90.5% methane purity with a 95.2% recovery. As for case study 2,
methane is obtained with a 97.5% purity and 95.3% recovery. Both case
studies can produce CO2with high purity and recovery (>97
and 95%, respectively) and syngas with a H2/CO ratio above
4. Although case study 2 allows methane to be used as domestic gas,
a much higher value for its energy consumption is observed compared
to case study 1 (64.9 vs 29.8 W h molCH4–1).