Patent ID: 10427090

Abstract:
The present invention relates to a method of controlling prepurifier cycle time by monitoring ambient CO2 level in order to prevent CO2 breakthrough occurrences caused by extreme instantaneous variations in ambient CO2 level. Rather than operating solely by prepurifier design bed capacity, the method of the invention continuously updates bed capacity for the contaminants using the feed temperature, pressure and contaminants composition, calculating the total amount of contaminants that were fed to the prepurifier during the feed step and estimates the perturbation front velocity, i.e., the velocity at which the contaminants front coming from an extreme instantaneous variations of ambient level is going to propagate inside the adsorbents bed. Estimating the perturbation front velocity allows for a more precise estimate of the maximum time remaining for the feed step before starting to experience CO2 breakthrough. This eliminates the need to switch the online bed unnecessarily early and risking shorter regeneration for the offline bed.