Carbon Monoxide Purification
The Challenge
The customer is an important manufacturer of industrial and rare gases and needs to purify carbon monoxide for a pharmaceutical application. They want to obtain a highly pure carbon monoxide product and find the best and most cost-effective separation technology for this application.
The typical feed composition is:
- CO: 99.8%
- N2: 0.1 %
- CO2: 500 ppm vol.
- THC: 150 ppm vol.
- Ar: 2000 ppm vol.
- H2: 100 ppm vol.
Our Solution
The proposed system consists of two main sections:
- The pre-treatment section that removes water and carbon dioxide by adsorbing them on molecular sieves in a parallel double bed system. One bed remains in service while the other undergoes regeneration using waste hot gas after pure CO separation.
- A cryogenic distillation section for the separation of other impurities, which is composed of two distillation columns:
Plant Design Data:
- Carbon monoxide Feed: 25 Nm3/h
- Outlet carbon monoxide composition:
- CO: 99.9995%
- O2: < 1 ppm
- H2O: < 1 ppm
- N2: < 5 ppm
- CO2: < 0.2 ppm
- Other impurities: < 1 ppm
Main Utilities Consumption:
- Liquid Nitrogen: 75 kg/h
- Electric power: 15 k
The Result
Innovative Solution – The Polaris plant offered an integrated system combining multiple technologies to solve the problem of removing several different types of contaminating compounds.
Safe and Reliable – A guaranteed safe and reliable solution was provided for regenerations of the molecular sieves – even in the presence of highly flammable streams.
Improved Product Quality & Value – Overall, when a client is interested in reaching very pure products, the Polaris plant can upgrade product quality, thus improving resale value.