A short review on industrial grade oxygen production from air by pressure swing adsorption

Oxygen notably has high demand to be used in industrial applications. It is crucial that effective and efficient technology needs to be developed to coping this situation. Generally, oxygen is generated through cryogenic distillation, which requires the air to undergo cooling, compression, and further purification. It can produce almost 99% oxygen purity, but it is cost-intensive and has high energy consumption. Therefore, pressure swing adsorption (PSA) is developed for oxygen production, which has uncomplicated operating principles and is cost-efficient with generating relatively high product purity. In this paper, a brief review of pressure swing adsorption is presented. The usage of oxygen produced through pressure swing adsorption has been reviewed for on-board oxygen generation systems (OBOGS) and oxy-enriched incineration of municipal solid waste (MSW). In addition, assumptions and correlations for material, heat and energy balances, as well as the adsorption equilibrium are included. This work also addresses the suitable adsorbents to be used to generate oxygen through pressure swing adsorption.