[Recovery of CO from an ammonia plant tail gas with pressure swing adsorption process]

Ammonia plant tail gas is an important CO source for C1 chemistry if an efficient separation/purification technology is available. Presented is pressure swing adsorption using a home made catalyst PU1 for recovery of CO from ammonia plant tail gas. A performance comparison of PU1 with a commercial zeolite was also presented. The pilot plant experiments were carried out in an intermission one-bed PSA unit with ammonia plant tail gas and a feed flow rate of 0.2-0.8 m3/h. The purity and recovery of CO was studied under various operating conditions. The operating conditions for the process were optimized and an optimum cyclic sequence of operation steps was proposed. A good performance of PU1 in the process was experimentally demonstrated. Product gas with a CO purity over 98% could be produced at a CO recovery of 75% for a feed gas CO concentration of 30% and gas pressure of 0.3 MPa.