Purge at low pressure (Step 4
5)

The adsorbent is then purged with high-purity hydrogen (taken from another adsorber on cocurrent
depressurisation) at constant offgas pressure to further regenerate the bed.
Repressurisation (Step 5
1)
The adsorber is then repressurised with hydrogen prior to being returned to the feed step. The hydrogen for
repressurisation is provided from the cocurrent depressurisation (step 2 above) and with a slipstream from the
hydrogen product. When the adsorber has reached the adsorption pressure, the cycle has been completed, and
the adsorber is ready for the next adsorption step.

Pressure Equalisations
The hydrogen removed during the cocurrent depressurisation steps is used to repressurise other adsorbers by
pressure equalisations and this reduces the hydrogen losses to fuel.
As a general rule, increasing the number of pressure equalisations increases the hydrogen recovery. However,
a minimum hydrogen purge is required to reject the impurities. Thus, for every application, an upper limit of
equalisations required to achieve maximum hydrogen recovery exists. Once this maximum is reached, adding
more pressure equalisations does not improve the hydrogen recovery.

Polybed PSA Units

Four-Bed Cycle
The classical PSA cycle, which is still widely applied today to smaller units (Figure 9), was developed in
1965 and used four adsorber vessels. More than 400 PSA units using this cycle have been supplied.

Importance of Cycle Time

Because the PSA process is a semibatch-type operation, the size of a PSA unit in terms of total adsorber or
adsorbent volume is determined by the process cycle time. The cycle time is the time required for an adsorber
to complete all the steps in a cycle (Figure 9).
The reduction in cycle time, and hence the reduction in adsorbent inventory and associated cost, has been one
of the main targets in UOPs PSA technology development. The first PSA units were designed for cycle
times between 16 and 20 minutes. With the invention of the POLYBED PSA units, the process steps could
be staggered in a more-efficient way when compared to the four-bed systems. Consequently, cycle time was
substantially reduced.