Use of x-ray microtomography to visualise dynamic adsorption of organic vapour and water vapour on activated carbon

Abstract

X-ray microtomography coupled with image analysis was used to quantify the adsorption of vapours on activated carbon beds. This technique was tested using three different challenges: CCl 4 , water vapour and a mixture of water-and organic vapour. It is shown that the used technique allows determining the adsorption front progress in the case of organic vapour and mixture of water and organic vapour whereas the existence of this front was not so obvious in the case of water vapour. Experimental results obtained for organic vapours were interpreted on the basis of the WheelerJonas equation: a good agreement was found between experimental and theoretical breakthrough times.

Estimating the Service Life of Activated Carbon Filters for Air Purification

“…More recently, this phenomenon has also been demonstrated inside a filter [26]. This is illustrated in Fig.…”

Quantitative imaging of gas adsorption equilibrium and dynamics by X-ray computed tomography

“…This is the approach also applied in this study. As an alternative to "conventional" process gases, strongly attenuating compounds can also be used, including krypton and xenon (Lu et al 1994;Watson and Mudra 1994;Karacan and Okandan 2001), as well as brominated (Dubinin et al 1975) or chlorinated (Lottaz and Lavanchy 1987;Lodewyckx et al 2006) solvent vapours. By increasing the photoelectric contribution to the linear attenuation coefficient, these radio-opaque compounds provide a five-to hundred-fold increase in the measured attenuation, which can be exploited to study more weakly sorbing materials (Lu et al 1994;Watson and Mudra 1994;Karacan and Okandan 2001;Vega et al 2014) or to increase the spatial resolution of the characterisation (Mayo et al 2015(Mayo et al , 2018.…”

“…So far, quantitative studies have been largely limited to one-dimension only, although both MRI and PET are designed to enable the three-dimensional visualisation of the sampled data-set. More recently, X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) was applied to measure in three-dimensions gas adsorption isotherms in microporous adsorbents and their packings Pini 2017, 2019), but attempts to image adsorption dynamics have so far been only qualitative (Lodewyckx et al 2006). X-ray CT is highly versatile and the technique enables probing a wide range of object sizes and spatial resolutions, from mm-sized samples imaged at micron-resolution using commercial desktop scanners to metre-sized samples imaged at mm-resolution using medical scanners.…”

Linear driving force models for dynamic adsorption of volatile organic compound traces by porous adsorbent beds

“…Road transportation and petroleum industry also generate VOCs. As these compounds have to be removed from humid air, interest for the dynamic adsorption of vapour also increases significantly [4].…”