Home▸Engineering & Materials▸Helium PSA: Pressure-Swing Adsorption Breakthrough (2D)

Helium PSA: Pressure-Swing Adsorption Breakthrough (2D)

2D pressure-swing-adsorption lab: a Langmuir isotherm and linear-driving-force kinetics, coupled to a real gas mass balance, cycle a CO2/CH4/N2-selective adsorbent bed between feed and blowdown to purify helium — watch purity decay as the bed loads and recover as it regenerates.

Engineering & Materials2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version

Details

CategoryEngineering & Materials

RenderingCanvas 2D

DifficultyModerate

Target FPS60

ControlsPick an adsorbent (activated carbon or carbon molecular sieve), then drag the feed-pressure, feed-impurity, adsorption-step and regeneration-step sliders and watch product purity and helium recovery respond live.

pressure swing adsorptionlangmuir isothermgas separationhelium purificationadsorption kineticschemical engineering

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This 2D companion replaces a decorative bed-of-particles animation with the real process behind helium purification: a competitive Langmuir isotherm and linear-driving-force kinetics, coupled to a real-gas mass balance on the adsorber's void gas, integrated with RK4 as the vessel cycles between a constant-pressure feed step and a blowdown regeneration step. Feed pressure, feed impurity fraction, adsorption-step length and regeneration-step length all feed directly into the same equations that set product purity and helium recovery, so the purity-vs-recovery trade-off at the heart of real PSA plant design is something you can watch happen rather than take on faith.

⚙ Under the hood

A single well-mixed adsorber bed: competitive Langmuir isotherm q_eq(p) = q_max·b·p/(1+b·p), linear-driving-force kinetics dq/dt = k_LDF·(q_eq−q), and a real-gas mass balance on the void-gas impurity pressure, integrated with 4th-order Runge-Kutta as the vessel cycles between a constant-pressure feed step and a blowdown regeneration step. Verified numerically: purity decays smoothly toward the full-breakthrough limit (1 − feed impurity fraction) as the adsorption step lengthens, while helium recovery rises over the same sweep — the real PSA purity/recovery trade-off, not a scripted animation.

pressure swing adsorptionlangmuir isothermgas separationhelium purificationadsorption kineticschemical engineering

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install