Modeling of gas-phase filter model for high- and low-challenge gas concentrations

•Perform an extensive review of the existing mass transfer-based adsorption models.•Compare the effective diffusivities for each model using different adsorption isotherms.•Verify the capability of PDM, HSDM, and PSDM models to predict the breakthrough curve.•Demonstrate the influencing parameters in translating between high and low concentrations.

Adsorption-based air and water cleaning technologies have long been employed in various industrial applications, and several models have been developed to study their performance. This paper gives an overview of the existing sorbent-based gas filters models that have been used to predict a filter’s performance for application in non-industrial buildings. The performance of existing models was investigated by comparing their predictions with experimental data of MEK and n-Hexane as a single-challenge gas for wide range of concentrations. A sensitivity analysis of models' parameters showed that the effective diffusivity has strong dependence on the concentration that is more noticeable for pore surface diffusion model. Considering the large discrepancies between the predicted and measured breakthrough curves at low concentrations using the pore diffusion model and the homogeneous-solid diffusion model, it is evident that further research is needed.