5. Practical representations of PSA cycles

The most efficient PSAs, or those handling high flow rates, feature a large number of adsorbers interacting with each other and operating cyclically. In order to follow the principle of their operation, it is necessary to have a suitable graphic representation. Several systems exist, with varying degrees of sophistication. One of the most widely used is to represent a pressure cycle over time, dividing it into as many "slices" of equal duration as there are adsorbers, in order to visualize the exchanges between them. Another is to represent a cycle in the form of a table with as many rows as there are adsorbers, and as many cells per row as there are steps in the cycle (generally no more than three cells per column).