Adsorption and Desorption Simulation of Carbon Canister Using n-Butane as Model Compound of Gasoline

作者：Sato Kazunari^*; Kobayashi Noriyuki

来源：Journal of the Japan Petroleum Institute, 2011, 54(3): 136-145.

DOI：10.1627/jpi.54.136

• Simulation
• Canister
• Activated carbon
• Adsorption
• Diffusion
• n-Butane

Evaporation of fuel gas from the fuel tank of a gasoline vehicle into the atmosphere is strictly controlled by regulations because the gas includes materials highly toxic to human health. Therefore, vehicles are equipped with an evaporative loss control device, of which one of the major parts is a carbon canister filled with activated carbon. Evaporation of fuel gas into the air can be prevented by adsorption/retention in the activated carbon during parking and by desorption/combustion during driving. This paper presents the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for the numerical evaluation of n-butane adsorption, desorption, and diffusion in the carbon canister. Such transient phenomena require huge calculation times even using high-end computing resources. Therefore, a unique method was used for the solution of some equations, allowing convergence in very short time. These equations demonstrated good correlation between experiments and simulation of breakthrough performance of the carbon canister.

• 出版日期2011-5