Predicting the lifetime of organic vapor cartridges exposed to volatile organic compound mixtures using a partial differential equations model

In this study, equilibria, breakthrough curves, and breakthrough times were predicted for three binary mixtures of four volatile organic compounds (VOCs) using a model based on partial differential equations of dynamic adsorption coupling a mass balance, a simple Linear Driving Force (LDF) hypothesis to describe the kinetics, and the well-known Extended-Langmuir (EL) equilibrium model. The model aims to predict with a limited complexity, the BTCs of respirator cartridges exposed to binary vapor mixtures from equilibria and kinetics data obtained from single component. In the model, multicomponent mass transfer was simplified to use only single dynamic adsorption data. The EL expression used in this study predicted equilibria with relatively good accuracy for acetone/ethanol and ethanol/cyclohexane mixtures, but the prediction of cyclohexane uptake when mixed with heptane is less satisfactory. The BTCs given by the model were compared to experimental BTCs to determine the accuracy of the model and the impact of the approximation on mass transfer coefficients. From BTCs, breakthrough times at 10% of the exposure concentration t(10%) were determined. All t(10%) were predicted within 20% of the experimental values, and 63% of the breakthrough times were predicted within a 10% error. This study demonstrated that a simple mass balance combined with kinetic approximations is sufficient to predict lifetime for respirator cartridges exposed to VOC mixtures. It also showed that a commonly adopted approach to describe multicomponent adsorption based on volatility of VOC rather than adsorption equilibrium greatly overestimated the breakthrough times.