Abstract—A mathematical modeling is performed to recover helium from fuel gas using polymeric membrane. This study implements a numerical model used in gas separation for hollow fiber membrane modules. Helium recovery from fuel gas is a process of great importance, but there is not yet simple and fast model applied to recover helium from multicomponent gas mixture. The numerical technique presented in this study shows reliable investigation of helium permeation with minimal effort in a membrane module. The presented model has been validated against available data from the literature. The results obtained by using presented model show good similarity with literature data. The model is extended to multistage membrane separation with different variation in permeate pressure. To our knowledge, this is first dependable numerical study for the recovery of helium from multicomponent gas mixture using countercurrent flow pattern and multistage membrane permeation. Operating conditions and membrane system structures are easy to optimize using this model due to its simplicity and algebraic nature.
Index Terms—Mathematical modeling, helium recovery, countercurrent flow, multistage permeation.
Muhammad Ahsan is with the School of Chemical & Materials Engineering, National University of Sciences & Technology, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan (e-mail: ahsan@scme.nust.edu.pk).
Arshad Hussain is with the School of Chemical & Materials Engineering, National University of Sciences & Technology, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan (e-mail: arshad.hussain@scme.nust.edu.pk).
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Cite: Muhammad Ahsan and Arshad Hussain, "Mathematical Modeling of Helium Recovery from a Multicomponent Fuel Gas with Polymeric Membrane," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 173-178, 2015.
