(611a) New Carbon and Zeolite Structured Adsorbents Made from Expanded PTFE

The overall objective of this work is to develop novel structured adsorbents from expanded PTFE (e-PTFE) comprising activated carbon, carbon molecular sieve and zeolite adsorbents within the PTFE framework. So far, structured columns have been fabricated from 5A zeolite, Shirasagi molecular sieve carbon (MSC)-3R Type 162 and BPL activated carbon. A nearly identical column has also been fabricated with the corresponding commercial beaded, granular or pelleted counterparts for testing under identical conditions. Details about the fabrication technique will be discussed including converting sorbent-PTFE composite tapes into spiral wound adsorber columns with minimal bypass of the gas mixture input stream. Also, representative results from four different experimental tests will be presented. These experimental tests include single gas adsorption breakthrough curve experiments for CO₂ in N₂, volumetric equilibrium adsorption isotherm experiments for column adsorbent mass determination with N₂, 1-bed pressure swing adsorption (PSA) cycling experiments with CO₂ in N₂, single gas 10 Hz or 100 Hz volumetric frequency response experiments with CO₂, N₂ and possibly other gases, and column axial pressure drop experiments with air.