Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emissions cause serious health problems and environmental pollution, and pressure swing adsorption (PSA) is one of the most promising technologies for VOCs removal and recovery. Commercial activated carbon and three typical VOCs (methanol, acetone and toluene) were selected as adsorbent and adsorbates, and the kilogram-level equipment was used to perform the pilot scale tests in order to study the application of PSA for removing and recycling VOCs in industry. The mechanism and industrial parameters including nonequilibrium time, effective length and enrichment ratio of PSA for removing and recycling VOCs has been studied by PSA experiments, static adsorption experiments, dynamic adsorption experiments, temperature programmed desorption (TPD) experiments and fitting. The results of PSA show that nonequilibrium time and effective length are related to the kinetic diameter, polarity of adsorbates and pore size, surface functional groups of adsorbents, and enrichment ratio is affected by the above factors and the boiling point of adsorbate. The horizontal comparison of three VOCs showed that methanol and acetone molecules with smaller kinetic diameter and greater polarity only need shorter effective length to removed completely by PSA. At low vacuum, the desorption performance is related to desorption activation energy (methanol 18.62 kJ/mol < acetone 22.20 kJ/mol < toluene 41.15 kJ/mol). At high vacuum, the desorption performance will be improved while the boiling point of adsorbate is lower than the temperature of fixed-bed. Based on this mechanism, the enrichment ratio of acetone can reach 2.1 under the same conditions, so that the recovery ratio of acetone became the highest among these three VOCs. This result provides new opportunities for the removal and recovery of VOCs gases.

挥发性有机化合物（VOC）的排放会导致严重的健康问题和环境污染，变压吸附（PSA）是去除和回收VOC的最有希望的技术之一。选择商业活性炭和三种典型的挥发性有机化合物（甲醇，丙酮和甲苯）作为吸附剂和被吸附物，并使用公斤级设备进行中试规模测试，以研究PSA在工业中去除和回收挥发性有机化合物的应用。通过PSA实验，静态吸附实验，动态吸附实验，程序升温解吸（TPD）实验和拟合，研究了机理和工业参数，包括非平衡时间，有效长度和PSA对VOC的回收利用。PSA的结果表明，非平衡时间和有效长度与动力学直径，被吸附物的极性和孔径，吸附剂的表面官能团有关，并且富集比受上述因素和被吸附物的沸点的影响。三种挥发性有机化合物的水平比较表明，动力学直径较小且极性较大的甲醇和丙酮分子仅需要较短的有效长度即可被PSA完全去除。在低真空下，解吸性能与解吸活化能有关（甲醇18.62 kJ / mol <丙酮22.20 kJ / mol <甲苯41.15 kJ / mol）。在高真空下，当被吸附物的沸点低于固定床的温度时，将提高解吸性能。基于这种机理，丙酮的富集比可以达到2。在相同条件下为1，因此丙酮的回收率在这三种VOC中最高。该结果为去除和回收VOC气体提供了新的机会。