Proposta de simulação dinâmica de colunas PSA (Pressure Swing Adsorption) para treinamento de operadores

Abstract

The concern with the environment and with human health and well-being is imposing restrictions to pollutant emissions to the atmosphere, especially the ones produced through the burning of fossil fuels. One of those pollutants is the sulfur dioxide (SO2) which is responsible for the acid rain phenomenon that contaminates crops, forests, etc. The SO2 is produced when the burned fuel contain sulfur in its composition. This means that the oil industry, driven by government limitations, currently tends to research ways of reducing the amount of this element in its products. The production and purification of hydrogen is an essential step to achieve this objective since it is the most used constituent in fuel desulphurization. Therefore, new units to generate and purify hydrogen are being implemented. To avoid accidents and the loss of supplies and products, the operators of these units must be properly trained. The most efficient and economical way to attain these results is the use of the Operator Training System (OTS). This project has as main objective the development of a mathematical model of an adsorption column (modular unit) to purify hydrogen and to propose its communication to a commercial simulator. To that end, the commercial simulator DYNSIM was used with a modular unit that contains the mathematical model of the adsorption operation of the hydrogen purification process using the Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) system. With the developed system, it is possible to establish different operational situations for operator training. The mathematical model was validated and the influence of some parameters was assessed. It took around 3 seconds to achieve the solution of the mathematical model of the adsorption modular unit. The communication between DYNSIM and the modular unit was achieved with Excel.