Silica gel is a typical porous desiccant material. Its adsorption performance for gaseous air pollutants was investigated to determine its potential contribution to reducing such pollutants. Three gaseous air pollutants, toluene, carbon dioxide, and methane, were investigated in this paper. A thermogravimetric analyzer was used to obtain the equilibrium adsorption capacity of gases on single silica gel particles. The silica gel adsorption capacity for toluene is much higher than that for carbon dioxide and methane. To understand gas pollutant thermal desorption from silica gel, the thermogravimetric analysis of toluene desorption was conducted with 609 ppm toluene vapor at 313 K, 323 K, and 333 K. The overall regeneration rate of silica gel was strongly dependent on temperature and the enthalpy of desorption. The gas pollutant adsorption performance and thermal desorption on silica gel material may be used to estimate the operating and design parameters for gas pollutant adsorption by desiccant wheels.

Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly (CDRA) is one of the most important systems in the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) for a manned spacecraft. With the development of adsorbent and CDRA technology, solid amine is increasingly paid attention due to its obvious advantages. However, a manned spacecraft is launched far from the Earth, and its resources and energy are restricted seriously. These limitations increase the design difficulty of solid amine CDRA. The purpose of this paper is to seek optimal design parameters for the solid amine CDRA. Based on a preliminary structure of solid amine CDRA, its heat and mass transfer models are built to reflect some features of the special solid amine adsorbent, Polyethylenepolyamine adsorbent. A multi-objective optimization for the design of solid amine CDRA is discussed further in this paper. In this study, the cabin CO₂ concentration, system power consumption and entropy production are chosen as the optimization objectives. The optimization variables consist of adsorption cycle time, solid amine loading mass, adsorption bed length, power consumption and system entropy production. The Improved Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II) is used to solve this multi-objective optimization and to obtain optimal solution set. A design example of solid amine CDRA in a manned space station is used to show the optimal procedure. The optimal combinations of design parameters can be located on the Pareto Optimal Front (POF). Finally, Design 971 is selected as the best combination of design parameters. The optimal results indicate that the multi-objective optimization plays a significant role in the design of solid amine CDRA. The final optimal design parameters for the solid amine CDRA can guarantee the cabin CO₂ concentration within the specified range, and also satisfy the requirements of lightweight and minimum energy consumption.