Experimental Analysis on Effects of Cycling Operation of Methane Adsorption and Desorption on Monolithic Activated Carbon

Adsorbed natural gas (ANG) provides a method of storing gas as one of the important resources of energy on suitable adsorbents at moderate pressures and ambient temperature. In this research study, an ANG system as a potential alternative to compressed natural gas (CNG) has been applied to store methane as one of the important component of natural gas on monolithic activated carbon. The present experimental study provides an experimental investigation of adsorption and desorption cycles of natural gas in a prototype storage vessel filled with monolithic activated carbon and the effect of the gas cycling on the adsorption and desorption capacity has been discussed. Many studies are devoted to the characterization of suitable adsorbent materials to optimize the methane storage capacity. Nevertheless, in this study the deterioration of the storage performance is observed after successive operating cycles of the ANG system. In the present study, the changes of the methane capacity of a 10 cycling operations is experimentally measured.