Activated carbon monolith of high thermal conductivity for adsorption processes improvement: Part B. Thermal regeneration

Composite materials made of expanded natural graphite (ENG) matrix in which activated carbon has been elaborated, present high thermal conductivity (up to 30 W m−1 K−1) compared to conventional activated carbon bed (0.15–0.5 W m−1 K−1). In a first part [D. Menard, X. Py, N. Mazet, Activated carbon monolith of high thermal conductivity for adsorption processes improvement. Part A. Adsorption step, Chem. Eng. Process., 44 (2005) 1029–1038], the experimental adsorption of pure and diluted CO2 has been presented for both the composite and a commercial granular bed for comparison. In the present part, thermal regenerations of the two adsorptive beds by peripheral heating are presented. The conductive composite leads to reduced regeneration time and to the production of concentrated gaseous streams of the adsorbate. The experimental data have been used for numerical model validation which is used for the estimation of the materials performances in larger column scale.