Feasibility of pressure swing adsorption (PSA) plus thermal swing adsorption (TSA) technology for odorant separation - A process design approach

PSA (pressure swing adsorption) has been a well known commercialized process in the petroleum refining engineering. With the consideration that the volatiles, odorants or essential oils in a variety of plants and herbs may be separated taking the advantage of PSA, we present in this article a newly designed process: PSA plus TSA (thermal swing adsorption). As the odorants or essential oils are unlike the volatile components in the petroleum, being characteristic with higher boiling points and able to become liquefied during the PSA treatment, thereby a TSA technique is necessarily incorporated, so that the whole process can be operated in an entirely gaseous phase to facilitate the separation.