I am currently doing a design project at uni and am required to give a list of design criterias and size two adsorption column that uses molecular sieves.
The feed will be 1349mol/hr water, 7095mol/hr ethanol and 5.5mol/hr isopropanol (This is what I obtained in Aspen using one distillation column). A first adsorption column will be used to remove the water whilst the second column will be used to extract the ethanol. The only thing I know for now is that I will be using a type 3A sieve for the first column, and a type 4A sieve for the second.
Can anyone point me out to relevant equations to calculate the size, surface area required, work for pump and heating requirements for regeneration? Also, is there any recommendations for how long the adsorption column should be running and how long the regeneration time is to be (my group has not given me any specific info on this yet)?
Attached is a rough version of our PFD, distillate stream table (which gives the feed flow and composition for the adsorption column) - please let me know if anything there is not feasible or wrong. Also, what is an efficient method to extract glucose and xylose from water at approx 100oC? I was considering evaporative drying because of the already high temperature but at the same time it seems extremely energy inefficient because of the large volumne of water (107122mol/hr) to be evaporated. Any advice on this aspect?
Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated as I have never been taught anything on this topic before.
Cheers