Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.58, No.12, 5008-5017, 2019
Volatile Organic Compound Liquid Recovery by the Dead End Gas Separation Membrane Process: Theory and Process Simulation
Economically viable technologies are urgently needed for liquid VOC (volatile organic compound) recovery from refinery exhausts and flaring gases. This paper describes a potentially promising new membrane technology for such applications, i.e., separating organic liquids from gas mixtures containing condensable VOCs, such as LPG (liquid petroleum gas), and light permanent gases. The process entails utilizing a gas separation membrane operating in dead end mode to produce VOC liquids. The feed stream for the membrane is a gas mixture containing VOCs, the retentate stream is a VOC liquid rather than a gas or a gasliquid mixture, and the permeate stream is a gas. The formation of the VOC liquids is controlled by the phase equilibrium in the feed side and dramatically enhanced by the high gas separation factors between the light permanent gases and the condensable gases and by removing the latent heat. Process simulations using the novel process for liquid propane production from methane/propane mixture and hydrogen/propane mixture were carried out, and the energy efficiency of the novel process in comparison to the cryogenic process was demonstrated.