Purification process for organic feedstocks

Abstract

Organic feedstocks containing at least one impurity component which is more strongly adsorbed on molecular sieve adsorbents than the host feedstock are purified of the said impurity by passage in the liquid phase through a fixed bed of the adsorbent whereby the impurity is selectively adsorbed and the purified feedstock recovered in unusually high yield by a novel bed regeneration procedure involving the use of a portion of the purified feedstock in the vapor phase to countercurrently remove the liquid held in the bed void space, a relatively non-sorbable purge gas to sequentially displace the purified feedstock vapor from the bed followed by a displacement of the non-sorbable purge gas from the bed void space using another portion of the purified feedstock in the vapor phase, and finally cooling and refilling the bed in a direction cocurrent with the flow of feedstock into the bed during the adsorption purification stage with a portion of the purified feedstock in the liquid phase.