The present invention generally relates to a pressure swing adsorption process for separating an adsorbate impurity from a feed stream comprising product gas, said process comprising feeding the feed stream to an adsorbent bed at a pressure of from about 60 psig to 2000 psig, wherein said adsorbent bed comprises adsorbent having: An isosteric heat of adsorption of from about 5 kJ/mol to about 30 kJ/mol, as determined by the LRC method, for the adsorbate, and an equivalent 65 kJ/mol or less isosteric heat of adsorption for the product,
wherein the adsorbent has a rate of adsorption for the adsorbate impurity that is at least 10 times greater than the rate of adsorption for the product gas as determined by the TGA method and recovering said product gas with a reduced a level of said adsorbate impurity. The invention also related to an adsorbent useful in PSA separations, particularly separating N.sub.2 from methane, CO.sub.2 from methane O.sub.2 from N.sub.2 and the like.

Apparatus, such as a portable oxygen concentrator (100) or other device communicating therewith, may be configured, such as with a processor(s), to estimate a remaining capacity of a sieve bed of the concentrator. Such apparatus may be configured to access a parameter of a measured pressure-time characteristic of the sieve bed for a phase of a pressure swing adsorption cycle of the oxygen concentrator. The apparatus may be configured to access function(s) of the parameter of the pressure-time characteristic and operational characteristic(s) of the sieve bed. The apparatus may be configured to estimate the remaining capacity by applying the function(s) to the parameter of the measured pressure-time characteristic. Such an estimate may then serve as a basis for providing notification, such as on a display or by electronic messaging, to inform of remaining life of the sieve bed, or otherwise promote timely replacement of a depleting component.

The present invention generally relates to a process for responding to feed flow variations by changing the process cycle and thereby increasing the productivity and capacity of the system significantly over constant process systems. This increases the flexibility a PSA system for customers that do not require a constant or uniform product flow rate and/or for processes and applications that experience feed streams that vary in flow, temperature, and/or composition.

The present invention is directed to an intensified process cycle that utilizes the adsorption beds present to a substantially greater degree allowing the processing of significantly more gas and/or the generation of significantly more product. The elimination of purge steps, reduction in equalization step times, and introduction of overlapping feed and equalization steps which normally cause a degradation in performance for equilibrium-based cycles, frees extra step for other actions to be taken, such as additional equalization steps, etc.

The present invention generally relates to a process that utilizes tunable zeolite adsorbents in order to reduce the bed size for nitrogen removal from a methane (or a larger molecule) containing stream. The adsorbents are characterized by the rate of adsorption of nitrogen and methane and the result is a bed size that is up to an order of magnitude smaller with these characteristics (in which the rate selectivity is generally 30) than the corresponding bed size for the original tunable zeolite adsorbent that has a rate selectivity of >100x.

The present invention generally relates to a pressure swing adsorption process for separating an adsorbate impurity from a feed stream comprising product gas, said process comprising feeding the feed stream to an adsorbent bed at a pressure of from about 60 psig to 2000 psig, wherein said adsorbent bed comprises adsorbent having: An isosteric heat of adsorption of from about 5 kJ/mol to about 30 kJ/mol, as determined by the LRC method, for the adsorbate, and an equivalent 65 kJ/mol or less isosteric heat of adsorption for the product,
wherein the adsorbent has a rate of adsorption for the adsorbate impurity that is at least 10 times greater than the rate of adsorption for the product gas as determined by the TGA method and recovering said product gas with a reduced a level of said adsorbate impurity.

The invention also related to an adsorbent useful in PSA separations, particularly separating N.sub.2 from methane, CO.sub.2 from methane O.sub.2 from N.sub.2 and the like.

The present disclosure relates a fake head assembly including a fake head body having an engage face, a first vacuum suction hole configured to be connected to an evacuating device to perform an evacuation, an adsorption portion having an adsorption surface, a plurality of first vacuum holes inside the fake head body, each first vacuum hole including a first end on the adsorption surface and a second end on the engage face, the plurality of first vacuum holes being arranged in order in a first direction of the fake head assembly; a shunt device detachably connected to the fake head body, the shunt device having a plurality of evacuating slots which extend in the first direction and have different extension lengths; the first vacuum suction hole being closable by the shunt device and selectively communicated with one evacuating slot, so as to be communicated the second end of at least some of the first vacuum holes via the one evacuating slot; and a connecting device for connecting the shunt device to the engage surface of the fake head body.

The present invention is directed to an intensified process cycle that utilizes the adsorption beds present to a substantially greater degree allowing the processing of significantly more gas and/or the generation of significantly more product. The elimination of purge steps, reduction in equalization step times, and introduction of overlapping feed and equalization steps which normally cause a degradation in performance for equilibrium-based cycles, frees extra step for other actions to be taken, such as additional equalization steps, etc.

Systems and methods are provided for performing a swing adsorption process, such as a temperature swing adsorption process. During portions of a swing cycle where one or more components are being desorbed, a vibration or other perturbation can be induced in the adsorbent and/or in the adsorbent structure to assist with desorption. Inducing a vibration or other perturbation in the adsorbent structure can provide a way to introduce additional energy into the adsorbent system without having to increase the temperature of the adsorbent structure.

The present disclosure relates a fake head assembly including a fake head body having an engage face, a first vacuum suction hole configured to be connected to an evacuating device to perform an evacuation, an adsorption portion having an adsorption surface, a plurality of first vacuum holes inside the fake head body, each first vacuum hole including a first end on the adsorption surface and a second end on the engage face, the plurality of first vacuum holes being arranged in order in a first direction of the fake head assembly; a shunt device detachably connected to the fake head body, the shunt device having a plurality of evacuating slots which extend in the first direction and have different extension lengths; the first vacuum suction hole being closable by the shunt device and selectively communicated with one evacuating slot, so as to be communicated the second end of at least some of the first vacuum holes via the one evacuating slot; and a connecting device for connecting the shunt device to the engage surface of the fake head body.