A concurrent approach for process design and multicomponent adsorption modeling with local isotherms

•A concurrent approach for isotherm determination and process design is proposed.•A concept of fitting multi-component isotherm locally is proposed.•Sensitivity analysis was performed to study robustness for uncertainty.•Significant reduction of experimental efforts can be achieved by proposed method.

An iterative approach is proposed to predict the optimal concentration profiles in an adsorption process and to simultaneously obtain parameters for a multicomponent isotherm by selecting representative liquid compositions for experimental measurements. The proposed approach was demonstrated for xylene adsorption on zeolite 13X that has undergone a barium ion exchange. Breakthrough experiments were performed at liquid compositions predicted by the process model, which was refined in an iterative manner with the experimental data. Robustness of the isotherm parameters for model uncertainty and variations in the process design were also analyzed.