7. Designing the valve layout for a PSA cycle

7.1 Adsorber interface valves

To implement a PSA cycle, it is necessary to develop a valve layout that allows the cycle to be carried out while minimizing, if possible, the number of valves. To this end, we present below a procedure for optimizing the number of valves to be installed, which can be applied to any type of adsorption process.

The valves used to interface with an adsorber can be of the "On/Off" (O/O) or "Control Valve" (CV) type, depending on whether or not it is necessary to control an inlet/outlet flow or a pressure variation to avoid any risk of damaging the adsorbent by setting the beds in motion.

Figure 18 shows an adsorber connected...