VPSA Oxygen Plant Development History

Since the invention of pressure swing adsorption separation technology, it has been widely used in the separation and refining of gas mixtures.
First, in 1958, Skarstorm applied for a patent and applied this technology to separate air. At the same time, Gerin de Montgareuil and Domine are also applying for a patent in France. The difference between the two is that the Skarstorm cycle is desorbed with partially low-pressure light product components after adsorption saturation in the bed, while the Gerin-Domine cycle uses a vacuum method for desorption.
In 1960, a large-scale industrial plant for air separation by pressure swing adsorption was built.
In 1961, pressure swing adsorption separation process was used to recover high-purity n-alkane solvent from naphtha, and it was named Isosiv process. In 1964, the process of recovering n-alkane from kerosene fractions was perfected.
In 1966, the four-tower process device for hydrogen extraction using pressure swing adsorption technology was built, and after the 1970s, multi-tower operation with more than four towers was adopted, and it was developed to large-scale and large-scale.
In 1970, an industrial unit for separating and recovering oxygen was built to meet the biochemical needs of environmental protection industrial sewage treatment. At the same time, it is widely used to extract n-alkanes from naphtha, and then isomerize the isomerized products into gasoline fractions to improve the Hysomer process of octane.
In 1975, the medical oxygen-rich concentrator was trial-produced. In 1976, the process of nitrogen production with carbon molecular sieve was developed and industrialized, and then the 5A zeolite molecular sieve was used to vacuum nitrogen production. In 1983, Germany introduced carbon molecular sieves with excellent performance for nitrogen production. By 1979, about half of all air dryers used Skarstrom's pressure swing adsorption process. Pressure swing adsorption is more efficient than temperature swing adsorption for drying air or industrial gases. The rapid pressure swing adsorption process (also known as parametric pump pressure swing adsorption) was developed in 1980.
Since the 1990s, due to the shortage of electric energy, pressure swing adsorption oxygen production has occupied a place in steel making and other fields.
1-2-1 Research on pressure swing adsorption oxygen production technology in China
The development of pressure swing adsorption oxygen production technology started earlier in China, and the technology of zeolite molecular sieve separating air oxygen production began to be studied in 1966. In the 1970s, PSA separation of air to produce oxygen has been widely used in industrial fields such as steel, smelting and glass kilns. Over the past 20 years, due to the dispersion of technical forces and the lack of contact between each other, China's pressure swing adsorption oxygen production technology has developed slowly, and the gap with foreign countries has become larger and larger. The 1970s was the heyday of the development of PSA separation air oxygen production technology in China, and more than a dozen units in the country successively carried out experimental research on pressure swing adsorption oxygen production technology and established several sets of industrial test equipment.