Techno-economic analysis of carbon molecular sieve membranes to produce oxygen enrichment air

Oxygen Enriched Air (OEA) is essential for medical applications, metal production, chemical production, the petrochemical industry, and energy processes. In this work, carbon molecular sieve membranes (CMSM) and membrane systems are analyzed concerning their technical and economic feasibility to produce OEA for medical, post-combustion, and oxy-combustion applications. Process parameters, such as stage-cut, feed-to-permeate pressure ratio, membrane area, and the number of stages, were studied to assess the technical and economic feasibility of this technology. In this work, it was observed that for each membrane, there is a permeating oxygen concentration that minimizes the specific oxygen cost. The production of 56 tonO(2)center dot day(-1) for a combustion enhancement process with a concentration of 72 % was obtained in a single-stage with a specific cost of 61.0 (sic)center dot tonO(2)(-1). A single-stage is also effective for producing OEA for medical applications (required concentration of 82 %) at a minimum separation cost of 45.8 (sic)center dot tonO(2)(-1). However, a two-stage system is required to produce OEA with a concentration higher than 95 % for oxy-combustion with an OEA production cost of 83.8 (sic)center dot tonO(2)(-1). These production costs are lower than those obtained with two different commercial membranes and are competitive with medium-scale cryogenic distillation and pressure swing adsorption processes.