Study of Charging Cycle of Methane on Activated Carbon for Gas Storage Application

The title of this project is Study of Charging Cycle of Methane on Activated Carbon for Gas Storage Application. The objectives of this project are to characterize the adsorbent and study the charging cycle of methane on activated carbon. The problem statement for this project is there are various of nanomaterials can be used for natural gas storage. However, the behavior of these materials during gas charging and gas discharging differs according to the nature of that material. This project is a study of charging cycle of methane on activated carbon at different charge pressure, flow rate and surface characteristics. The scope of study will cover various charging experiments to determine the methane adsorption capacity and the thermal behaviour during charging phase. The material surface morphology, pore size, micropore volume and specific surface area are obtained for material characterization. Two types of commercial activated carbon are used. The methodology of the experiment is divided into two stages. The first stage is to characterize the materials using FESEM/SEM and BET. The second stage is to study the charging cycle of gas employing that materials using SOLTEQ BP 203 Gas Adsorption Column Unit. The experiment is a volumetric method with charge pressure at 20, 40 and 60 bar at different charge flow rate at 1,2 and 3 L/min. The temperature of adsorption starts at 298 K. The results show that the surface characteristics of the carbon adsorbent such as BET surface area, micropore volume and micropore area would influence the adsorption capacity. The overall adsorption capacity of both the activated carbons is compared with adsorption capacity of other carbon from previous researches.AC1 and AC2 are found to have average high for methane adsorption among the materials. The adsorption capacity of AC1 and AC2 is relatively low compared to other carbon adsorbents mainly due to its low surface area. This project has studied the adsorption behavior during charging of gas. The temperature profile and gas saturation period during adsorption strongly depends on the adsorption pressure and the charge flow rate. In conclusion, the materials surface characteristics are characterized to determine its suitability for ANG application and the charging cycle of methane on activated carbon is studied with variation of charge pressure and flow rate.