Abstract: A method for the recovery of fugitive volatile organic vapors which comprises the steps of: (a) compressing said vapors to a pressure of at least 200 kpa; (b) feeding the hot compressed vapors to the desorption step of a Heat-Mass-Exchange (HME) system; (c) cooling the effluent resulted from the desorption step to the ambient temperature and separating out the condensed liquid obtained and (d) feeding the residual cold vapor phase, after the separation of the condensed liquid, to the adsorption step of said HME system, thus recovering the fugitive organic vapors. According to a preferred embodiment, the compressed vapors resulted from step (b) are at a temperature in the range of between 80.degree. to 150.degree. C., which may be reached by an external heating and the effluent resulted from the desorption step (c) is cooled at a temperature of about 5.degree. C.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method for carrying out simultaneous heat and mass exchange operations between two input streams, where a gradient of at least 30 degrees C. exists between the streams, each stream containing at least two components. According to the invention, the two streams are introduced into a reactor containing a solid or liquid adsorbent material, which retains at least one component preferentially to the other components. The adsorbancy power of the component by the adsorbent material is higher at lower temperatures than at high temperatures. A stream results from the reactor in which the diluted component becomes more concentrated in respect to the input stream. The equilibrium concentration of the adsorbable species in the adsorbent, at the conditions of the colder stream, is higher by at least 0.01 g adsorbed species per g adsorbent than that prevailing at the conditions of the hot feed.