ABSTRACT
A fixed bed is filled with particles, and mass transfer, chemical reactions, and so forth, between particles and a fluid are induced by passing a fluid through the stationary layer of particles. In a fixed bed, particles of size from mm to cm order are used to maintain a low-pressure loss. Pressure swing adsorption (PSA) is a typical adsorption process using a fixed bed. PSA has four operation processes: pressurization, adsorption, decompression, and desorption. These processes are operated cyclically in a multi-adsorber system. In the heat-exchange-type, the temperature of the particles and fluid is controlled using a heat carrier in the case of a strongly exothermic reaction. In this case, a multistage fixed bed reactor and a multi tubular fixed bed reactor are used. The scaling up of a fixed bed is relatively easy when the reaction heat and adsorption heat can be neglected.
