Egyptian Journal of Petroleum xxx (2017) xxxxxx

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Egyptian Journal of Petroleum

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Accurate estimation of CO2 adsorption on activated carbon with

multi-layer feed-forward neural network (MLFNN) algorithm
Alireza Rostami a, Mohammad Amin Anbaz b, Hamid Reza Erfani Gahrooei b, Milad Arabloo c,,
Alireza Bahadori d,
a
Young Researchers and Elites Club, Ahvaz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahvaz, Iran
b
Department of Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of Technology (PUT), Ahwaz, Iran
c
Young Researchers and Elites Club, North Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
d
School of Environment, Science & Engineering, Southern Cross University, P.O. Box 157, Lismore, NSW 2480, Australia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Global warming due to greenhouse effect has been considered as a serious problem for many years
Received 2 November 2016 around the world. Among the different gases which cause greenhouse gas effect, carbon dioxide is of
Revised 12 January 2017 great difficulty by entering into the surrounding atmosphere. So CO2 capturing and separation especially
Accepted 22 January 2017
by adsorption is one of the most interesting approaches because of the low equipment cost, ease of oper-
Available online xxxx
ation, simplicity of design, and low energy consumption.
In this study, experimental results are presented for the adsorption equilibria of carbon dioxide on acti-
Keywords:
vated carbon. The adsorption equilibrium data for carbon dioxide were predicted with two commonly
Global warming
CO2 adsorption
used isotherm models in order to compare with multi-layer feed-forward neural network (MLFNN) algo-
Activated carbon rithm for a wide range of partial pressure. As a result, the ANN-based algorithm shows much better effi-
Multi-layer feed-forward neural network ciency and accuracy than the Sips and Langmuir isotherms. In addition, the applicability of the Sips and
algorithm Langmuir models are limited to isothermal conditions, even though the ANN-based algorithm is not
Statistical quality measures restricted to the constant temperature condition. Consequently, it is proved that MLFNN algorithm is a
promising model for calculation of CO2 adsorption density on activated carbon.
2017 Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open
access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction Because of extremely developed structure of porous materials

Over the past century, it has been understood that CO2 as an
important greenhouse gas, is mainly produced by widespread fos-
sil fuel supplies which could be captured by various method espe-
cially by utilization of simple, low initially cost approach called
adsorption [1]. At early steps of adsorption system that is a surface
phenomenon by which a polluted stream of multi-component mix-
ture of gas or liquid flows through a flat and solid surface of acti-
vated carbon as an adsorbent and the pollutant molecules stick
to this adsorbent particles by means of physical or chemical bonds
that is identified as the most efficient, promising approach until
the entire surface of adsorbent is covered by CO2 molecules [2],
completely depends on its high technical feasibility, social accep-
tance, simplicity, and economical attainability [3].
Peer review under responsibility of Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute.
Corresponding authors.
E-mail addresses: milad.arabloo@gmail.com (M. Arabloo), Alireza.bahadori@scu.
edu.au (A. Bahadori).
such as activated carbons and zeolites, as well as molecular sieve,
they are appropriate candidates for CO2 capturing by means of
physical adsorption [4]. Among these porous adsorbent, activated
carbon is of great interest that has lots of advantages and disadvan-
tages. Advantages are having large porous specific surface area, low
acid/base reactivity, thermodynamically stable nature, and porous
structure with high controllability [5]. Moreover, they can be pro-
duced in large quantities inexpensively, are compacted into a
packed bed efficiently, and have a large microporous volume [6].
It is notable that development of microporosity in carbon matrix
by activation process which establishes a very large intrinsic net-
work area of small pores, thus prepares a higher storage density
and consequently higher storage capacity [7]. Even though it has
a lot of usages, the largest hindrance of its application by the indus-
tries are the regeneration problems and the cost-prohibitive adsor-
bent [8].
It is crucially necessary to establish the most suitable adsorp-
tion equilibrium correlation for achieving an ideal adsorption sys-
tem [9], which is essential for dependable diagnosing of adsorption

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpe.2017.01.003
1110-0621/ 2017 Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Please cite this article in press as: A. Rostami et al., Accurate estimation of CO2 adsorption on activated carbon with multi-layer feed-forward neural net-
work (MLFNN) algorithm, Egypt. J. Petrol. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpe.2017.01.003
2 A. Rostami et al. / Egyptian Journal of Petroleum xxx (2017) xxxxxx
Nomenclature
q adsorption density (g CO2/g activated carbon)
qs maximum adsorption density (g CO2/g activated
carbon)
qexp
i
experimental adsorption density (g CO2/g activated
carbon)
qpred
i predicted adsorption density (g CO2/g activated carbon)
P carbon dioxide partial pressure (kPa)
T temperature (K)
B Langmuir isotherm constant (kPa1)
coefficients and quantitative comparison of adsorbent manner for
various experimental conditions [10]. From engineering point of
view, in order to optimize adsorption equilibrium correlation,
mechanism, effective designation of systems, and equilibrium rela-
tionships, known as adsorption isotherms, which represent the
complexity of interaction between pollutants and the adsorbent
particles, are critically important [11].
In addition to the adsorption equilibrium correlation and sys-
tem, the type of polluted fluid which passes through adsorbent,
has its own impact on the quality of adsorption. As it is known, car-
bon dioxide is a non-ideal gas which can be adsorbed on the micro-
porous structure of activated carbon easier than ideal gases (e.g.
N2) because of low critical temperature of CO2 that can be con-
densed easier than ideal gases [12].
In accordance to the above mentioned characterization of
adsorption system and in spite of existing great numbers of publica-
tions and books dealing with gas-solid adsorption, it is very hard to
make a unified perspective of this surface phenomenon. In other
words, adsorption can be attained either by conducting experiments
or by applying predictive isotherm models. Both experimental
determination and isotherm models have their own disadvantages.
On the other hand, laboratory determination of adsorption is rela-
tively expensive and time consuming. In addition, most of the
adsorption isotherms have several types of assumptions for simpli-
fication purposes, applicable to a specific range of data, must be fit-
ted with experimental data of a constant temperature, and require
very detailed knowledge of the system, which may not be available
most of the time leading to considerable errors [13]. So the usage is
partially exhausting, overwhelming or intolerable. Therefore, an
essential need for generating a simple, accurate, and widespread
model is tangible that made the authors to investigate a novel and
unseen soft computing technique. Despite predictive isotherm mod-
els, soft computing techniques are best suited to solve various diffi-
cult engineering problems that are the most difficult to solve by
traditional computational methods. During the past decades some
efforts have been made to the applications of soft computing tech-
niques in the industry and academic study [14].
The purpose of this study is to establish an efficient artificial
network based on multi-layer feed forward neural network
(MLFNN) so that it could be applied for determination of carbon
dioxide adsorption equilibrium curve for the microporous struc-
ture of activated carbon as a function of thermodynamic conditions
covering a wide range of temperature and carbon dioxide partial
pressure.
2. Methodology
2.1. Adsorption isotherm models
In general perspective, an adsorption isotherm is an invaluable
curve depicting the phenomenon determining the retention or
Please cite this article in press as: A. Rostami et al., Accurate estimation of CO2 adsorption on activated carbon with multi-layer feed-forward neural net-
work (MLFNN) algorithm, Egypt. J. Petrol. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpe.2017.01.003
B Sips isotherm constant (kPan)
Z Sips isotherm model exponent (dimensionless)
ARD average relative deviation
AARD average absolute relative deviation
MSE mean square error
RMSE root mean square error
SD standard deviation
R2 determination coefficient
mobility of a substance (e.g. CO2) from the aqueous porous media
to a solid-phase at a constant temperature and pH [15]. Based on
the equilibrium data, adsorption equations are obtained which
are the basis of the simulation models. Furthermore, every model
was interconnected with explicit equations, and vice versa. For this
reason, it is inconceivable to review all models established within
the past century [16]. In other words, expansion of these models
allows correlation and diagnosis of mixture data, which optimizes
the number of experiments required to describe the gassolid
equilibrium [17]. These isotherms are generally divided into three
groups including kinetic theory [18], thermodynamics theory
[19,20] and potential theory [21].
2.1.1. Langmuir [22] isotherm model
Basically, it is classified in kinetic theory, based upon localized
adsorption [23] which have been developed to describe gassolid
adsorption onto activated carbon, however, it has a wide range of
applicability, especially for molecular sieves. It has traditionally
two parameters in its isotherm formulation. Also this empirical
model assumes monolayer adsorption (the adsorbed layer is one
molecule in thickness) [24]. This model can be represented as
below [23]:
q bP
1
qS 1 bP
b and qS are model parameters, which are determined from the
slope and intercept of the plot of (1=q) versus (1=P) (linearization):
1 1 1 1
2
q qS qS b P
2.1.2. Sips [22] isotherm model
Combination of Langmuir [22] and Freundlich [22] expressions
applied for predicting the heterogeneous and multilayer region
adsorption systems with three adjustable parameters by which
forecasts experimental data more accurate than the Langmuir iso-
therm [23]:
q BP Z
3
qS 1 BP Z
2.2. Background of artificial neural network (ANN)
Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are parallel information pro-
cessing approaches which is applied for data processing, process
analysis and control, fault detection, pattern recognition, and
defining complex and nonlinear relationship and employs number
of inputoutput training patterns from the experimental data
[2527]. ANN models were designed in the second half of the
20th century by mathematical simulation of the procedures on
which the human nervous system works [25,28].
 A. Rostami et al. / Egyptian Journal of Petroleum xxx (2017) xxxxxx 3

Finding a nonlinear algorithm between inputs and outputs is
obtained by natural ability of ANNs. They are made of nodes or
neurons, number of simple computing components, which utilized
to form respectively an input layer, one or more hidden layers and
an output layer [29]. Flexibility of model and accuracy in predic-
tion are needed for developing a model. Also, neural networks
are suitable for prediction of complex nonlinear functions com-
pared to other literature models [30,31].
ANNs are generally categorized by feed-forward networks (Per-
ceptron network), competitive networks (Hamming network) and
recurrent networks (Hopfield network) [32]. The method for pre-
diction of CO2 adsorption density is based on a feed-forward neural
network model.
tion, from input to output, is the most common neural network
architecture. The number of inputs in the process is the same as
the number of nodes in the feed forward neural network input
layer, whereas the number of output nodes is equal to the number
of process output [33,34]. Training procedure of MLFNN is based on
algorithm of back propagation. This type of ANNs has one or more
hidden layer(s), consist of hidden neurons [35].
This ANN, can estimate complex nonlinear functions. Fig. 1
illustrates the architecture of the MLFNN in prediction of CO2
adsorption density on the activated carbon as porous adsorbent.
In the learning procedure, parameters of the proposed MLFNN
(weights and biases) are optimized. These procedures are based
on the difference between the desired targets and outputs.

2.2.1. Multi-layer feed-forward artificial neural networks (MLFNN) 2.2.2. Data selecting and analysis
Feed-forward neural network architecture, network structure in In order to establish the artificial network, suitable number of
which the information or signals will generate only in one direc- data points on CO2 adsorption density on the activated carbon
must be obtained from literature that are in dissimilar operational
conditions [7]. In this research, 190 datapoints of CO2 adsorption
1 density on the activated carbon are gathered from the literature
[7]. Table 1 describes the statistical quality measures of the data-
bank used for modeling. Gathered data from literature are divided
into three groups (training, validation and testing sets). The train-
T 2
ing set includes 133 data points (70% of the gathered literature
experimental datapoints), the testing set includes 30 datapoints
and remaining 27 datapoints (rest of datapoints) are exploited as
the validation set. It should be mentioned that the test data are
3
q exploited to appraise the performance of the proposed network.
Specifications of training, validation, testing and total datasets
are exhibited in Table 2.

P 2.2.3. Input of the feed-forward network

Before creating the artificial network, the input variables of the
MLFNN should be determined. In order to establish the artificial
network for accurate diagnosing of CO2 adsorption density on the
activated carbon as an adsorbent, carbon dioxide partial pressure
and temperature are assumed as the input variables of MLFNN
12 method which is given as follows:
q f P; T 4
Fig. 1. Architecture of MLFNN with one hidden layer and 12 neurons.

Table 1
Statistical description of the data bank used for modeling.

Parameter Unit Min. Avg. Max. SD

P kPa 0.8 789.4726 3480.6 1016.577
T K 273.3 301.83 323.3 17.11349
q g/g 0.00 0.205255 0.809 0.221072

Table 2
Specifications of training, validation, testing and total datasets.

Dataset Specification Pressure (kPa) Temperature (K) Adsorption density (gr/gr) Na

Range 0.83480.6 273.3323.3 0.0010.809
Training Average 782.4158 301.4218 0.204805
SD 1015.656 16.93749 0.223033 133
Range 2.53454.2 273.3323.3 0.0030.787
Validation Average 1003.004 302.137 0.241444
SD 1194.613 18.57801 0.243546 27
Range 12855.9 273.3323.3 0.0010.699
Testing Average 628.58 303.3633 0.174683
SD 831.1471 17.03529 0.191653 30
Range 0.83480.6 273.3323.3 0.000.809
Total Average 789.4726 301.83 0.205255
SD 1016.577 17.11349 0.221072 190
a
N refers to the number of dataset.

Please cite this article in press as: A. Rostami et al., Accurate estimation of CO2 adsorption on activated carbon with multi-layer feed-forward neural net-
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4 A. Rostami et al. / Egyptian Journal of Petroleum xxx (2017) xxxxxx

2.2.4. Preprocessing 8
For neural network modeling, input variables must be in sim- Tan-sigmoid

Average absolute relative deviation percent (AARD)

ilar order [36]. Based on Table 1, order of input variables is dis- Triangular basis
7
similar from each other; since input variables have dissimilar Satlin
physical units and range, thus standardization of input variables Linear
6
is vital. Therefore, inputs and output parameters (carbon dioxide Symmetric hard limit
partial pressure, temperature and adsorption density) should be Hard limit
5
standardized between 0 and 1 before creating the neural
network.
4
2.2.5. Developing optimized network
2.2.5.1. Training procedure. After defining the input variables, the 3
best architecture of the neural network should be identified. For
optimizing the suggested artificial network, an algorithm accord- 2
ing to repetitive procedure is utilized. Number of neurons is one
of the key variables on the performance of MLFNN. There are an 1
optimal number of neurons in the hidden layer(s) of the network.
If the number of neurons in hidden layer(s) is greater than the opti- 0
mized value, over-fitting may occur and if it is less than the opti-
mal value in hidden layer(s), the performance of the MLFNN is Fig. 2. Error analysis and comparison of the developed ANNs consist of 12 neurons
not suitable [37]. in first hidden layer with different transfer functions.

Among learning procedure, algorithm of Levenberg-Marquardt

back-propagation with exploiting a Bayesian regularization tech-
1E0
nique is used [3841]. Table 3 presents results of comparison Train
between developed neural networks with different transfer func- Best
1E-1
tions. Based on results that presented in Table 3, minimum error Goal
is acquired when MLFNN is created with the Tan-sigmoid transfer
function. The Tan-sigmoid function is as follows: 1E-2
Mean square error (MSE)

expx  expx 1E-3

f x 5
expx expx
1E-4
It is stated that the Tan-sigmoid transfer function reflects tan-
gent hyperbolic. For better visual comparison the results of Table 3
1E-5
are plotted in Fig. 2. Fig. 2 indicates the error analysis and compar-
ison of the developed MLFNNs consist of 12 neurons in first hidden
layer with different transfer functions. 1E-6

For acquiring a proper MLFNN by exploiting the algorithm of

Bayesian regularization, with the aim of minimizing the mean 1E-7
square error (MSE), weights and biases of the created MLFNN are
obtained. Learning step is done when MSE stayed constant over 1E-8
0 100 200 300 400 500 600
several iterations [42]. Fig. 3 shows the variation of MSE versus
the number of iteration in training process. Based on this figure, Number of iteration
the model is optimized with 230 iterations. Fig. 3. Variation of mean square error (MSE) versus the number of iteration in
training process.
2.2.5.2. Designating and development of optimum MLFNN struc-
ture. The objective function during model computation is to mini-
3. Results and discussions
mize the mean square error (MSE) between the results of MLFNN
algorithm and corresponding experimental data, which is defined
3.1. Proposed MLFNN definition and description
by Eq. (6):
Results of developed neural networks consist of two hidden lay-
PN  pred 2
i1 qi  qexp
i
ers with different neurons in each layer are presented in Table 4.
MSE 6 For finding the best MLFNN architecture, the neurons number is
N
varying from 8 to 16 in first hidden layer. From results that are

Table 3
Developed ANNs consist of 12 neurons in first hidden layer with different transfer functions.

Proposed transfer functions Train data set

Transfer function ARD MSE  106 R2 Epoch
Tan-sigmoid 2.4897 1.9902 0.9999 230
Triangular basis 2.9352 2.2854 0.9991 852
Satlin 3.3721 2.8463 0.9963 1064
Linear 3.7621 3.0175 0.9946 1372
Symmetric Hard-Limit 3.9472 3.2864 0.9938 1587
Hard-Limit 4.7122 3.9174 0.9892 2713

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 A. Rostami et al. / Egyptian Journal of Petroleum xxx (2017) xxxxxx 5

Table 4
Developed ANNs with two hidden layers and dissimilar number of neurons.

Proposed network Training dataset

Number of neurons in first hidden layer ARD MSE  106 R2 Epoch
8 11.7402 6.2891 0.9648 1578
9 5.3824 4.0611 0.9862 1186
10 3.2611 2.9672 0.9968 971
11 2.7328 2.1643 0.9993 723
12 2.4897 1.9902 0.9999 230
13 3.9281 3.3185 0.9921 1492
14 3.7211 3.1854 0.9936 983
15 4.3729 3.8254 0.9899 2196
16 3.6271 3.0732 09942 1738

given in Table 4 it is obvious that the best MLFNN architecture is 3.2. Parameters of the isotherm models
obtained after 230 epochs and it has 12 neurons in first hidden
layer, the values of AARD, MSE and R2 for the best developed At a constant temperature, the pressure and adsorption density
MLFNN are 2.4897%, 1.9902E6 and 0.9999, respectively. For bet- dataset are fitted to Langmuir and Sips equilibrium curves in order
ter comparison the result of Table 4 is plotted in Fig. 4. Fig. 4 rep- to determine the coefficients of these models. Tables 6 and 7 show
resents error analysis and comparison of the developed MLFNNs the tuned coefficients of Langmuir and Sips isotherms at different
with two hidden layers and dissimilar number of neurons. For dif- temperatures, respectively.
ferent number of neurons bias and weight values of the suggested
MLFNN are presented in Table 5. 3.3. Evaluation of the suggested MLFNN model

The statistical parameters of the developed MLFNN model for

12 prediction of adsorption density are illustrated in Table 8. Obvi-
ously, for the all datasets including training, validation, test and
Average absolute relative deviation percent (AARD)

11 total datasets the value of R2 is greater than 0.9999, and the value
10 of AARD is less than 3%. Fig. 5 represents the crossplot of the devel-
oped MLFNN predictions versus the corresponding measured CO2
9
adsorption density values. For all of the dataset, the precision of
8 the suggested MLFNN model is exhibited via tight accumulation
of datapoints around the 45 line. The determination coefficient
7
(R2) is a commonly used statistical parameter, which explains
6 how well the suggested MLFNN model accurately reproduces the
5

4 Table 6
Tuned coefficients of Langmuir isotherm in different temperatures (i.e. Eq. (1)).
3
T (K) P (kPa) q (g/g) b qs
2
273.3 3.43366.3 0.010.809 0.006531 1.167
1 279.4 8.93436.6 0.0180.78 0.006011 1.137
290.1 11.43480.6 0.0170.69 0.005646 0.9938
0 299.1 0.81013.6 0.0020.282 0.01279 0.4851
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 310.2 0.9948.2 0.0020.228 0.01174 0.422
Number of hidden neurons 310.5 4.93454.2 0.0050.505 0.004722 0.7889
319.2 0.9976.2 0.0010.205 0.01008 0.4041
Fig. 4. Error analysis and comparison of the developed MLFNNs with two hidden 323.3 13454.2 0.0010.435 0.00401 0.7294
layers and dissimilar number of neurons.

Table 5
Weight and Bias of the best ANN

Neuron Parameters of developed ANN

T P Bias q Bias
1 0.0042 0.0172 2.1109 10.2813 18.2869
2 0.0003 0.0305 12.4183 2.2163
3 0.0011 0.0521 11.5757 0.1269
4 2.0275 0.2092 39.3759 0.0013
5 0.0002 0.0169 5.8403 5.9199
6 0.0002 0.0095 3.7851 13.1269
7 0.0009 0.1795 50.4898 3.9118
8 0.0009 0.2267 64.8978 0.8170
9 0.0008 0.1999 55.5551 0.1684
10 0.0038 0.1333 37.8922 0.0199
11 0.0008 0.1685 47.5050 4.9644
12 0.0005 0.0453 14.6764 0.1682

Please cite this article in press as: A. Rostami et al., Accurate estimation of CO2 adsorption on activated carbon with multi-layer feed-forward neural net-
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6 A. Rostami et al. / Egyptian Journal of Petroleum xxx (2017) xxxxxx

Table 7
Tuned coefficients of Sips isotherm in different temperatures (i.e. Eq. (3)).

T (K) P (kPa) q (g/g) b c qs

273.3 3.43366.3 0.010.809 0.01005 0.7051 2.18
279.4 8.93436.6 0.0180.78 0.00802 0.6780 2.675
290.1 11.43480.6 0.0170.69 0.00611 0.6727 2.88
299.1 0.81013.6 0.0020.282 0.01113 0.7947 0.9271
310.2 0.9948.2 0.0020.228 0.00851 0.7997 0.9313
310.5 4.93454.2 0.0050.505 0.00608 0.7397 1.598
319.2 0.9976.2 0.0010.205 0.00786 0.8290 0.7883
323.3 13454.2 0.0010.435 0.00509 0.7866 1.292

Table 8 1
The statistical parameters of the developed MLFNN model for prediction of the
Training set
adsorpsion.

Parameter Value Validation set

0.8

Predicted adsorption density (gr/gr)

Training set
R2 0.999954 Test set
Average relative deviation, %a 0.088810
Average absolute relative deviation, %b 2.489682
Root mean square errorc 0.001507 0.6
Number of data samples 133
Validation set
R2 0.999925
0.4
Average relative deviation, % 1.495211
Average absolute relative deviation, % 2.434072
Root mean square error 0.002089
Number of data samples 27
0.2
Test set
R2 0.999947
Average relative deviation, % 0.871243
Average absolute relative deviation, % 2.871263
Root mean square error 0.001411 0
Number of data samples 30 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Measured adsorption density (gr/gr)
Total
R2 0.999948 Fig. 5. Predicted adsorption density versus measured adsorption density for
Average relative deviation, % 0.012746 MLFNN model.
Average absolute relative deviation, % 2.542029
Root mean square error 0.001589
Number of data samples 190
1
  Target data
a PN qexp qpred
Average relative deviation ARD% N 100
i1
i
.
qexp
i

i
  0.9 Train data
b PN qexp qpred 
 .
Average absolute relative deviation AARD% N 100 i
i1  qexp
i
 Test data
i
0.8
PN exp pred 2 12 Validation data
c qi qi
Root mean square error (RMSE) RMSE i1
N .
0.7
Adsorption density (gr/gr)

0.6
target data. A greater R2 value nearer to unity indicates a more con-
sistent prediction. As shown in the exhibited crossplot, the R2 value 0.5
is equal to 0.999948 for the CO2 adsorption density data, undoubt-
edly emphasizing the proficiency of the employed MLFNN algo- 0.4
rithm in modeling the CO2 adsorption density on activated
carbon as an adsorbent. 0.3
Additionally, to show a better visual comparison, the target and
0.2
the predicted values were plotted as a function of the number
(index) of datasets at the same time in Fig. 6 for all the CO2 adsorp-
0.1
tion density values. As shown, the predictions are in acceptable
agreement with the measured CO2 adsorption density. Fig. 7 illus- 0
trates the plot of relative deviation (RD) percent versus the MLFNN 0 50 100 150 200
predictions and target values which are closely gathered nearby Data index
the zero horizontal line. The average relative deviation (ARD) per- Fig. 6. Predicted and measured adsorption density values of MLFNN model versus
cent of the suggested MLFNN predictions is equal to 0.012746%. data index.
Tables 9, 10 and 11 represent the statistical quality measures of
the developed MLFNN model, Sips and Langmuir equilibrium ARD = 0.9617%, RMSE = 0.00356 and R2 = 0.999740 for Sips iso-
curves for prediction of the CO2 adsorption density in different therm, and AARD = 18.12%, ARD = 16.5805%, RMSE = 0.01347
ranges of dataset, respectively. These tables show the total statisti- and R2 = 0.996949 for Langmuir isotherm. Therefore, the suggested
cal quality measures of AARD = 2.54%, ARD = 0.0127%, MLFNN model gives the best accuracy of all. As shown, the pro-
RMSE = 0.001589 and R2 = 0.999948 for MLFNN, AARD = 3.19%, posed MLFNN model has the lowest AARD, ARD and RMSE, and

Please cite this article in press as: A. Rostami et al., Accurate estimation of CO2 adsorption on activated carbon with multi-layer feed-forward neural net-
work (MLFNN) algorithm, Egypt. J. Petrol. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpe.2017.01.003
 A. Rostami et al. / Egyptian Journal of Petroleum xxx (2017) xxxxxx 7

20 Langmuir
Train data 323.3
323.3 Sips
15 323.3
Validation data MLFNN
319.2
10 319.2
Test data 319.2
310.5
5 310.5

Temperature (K)
Relative deviation (%)

310.5
310.2
0 310.2
310.2
-5 299.1
299.1
299.1
-10 290.1
290.1
290.1
-15 279.4
279.4
279.4
-20
273.3
273.3
-25 273.3
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Measured adsorption density (gr/gr) 0 5 10 15 20 25
Average absolute relative deviation percent (AARD)
Fig. 7. Relative deviation (RD) percent of MLFNN model versus measured adsorp-
tion density values. Fig. 8. Comprehensive error analysis of CO2 adsorption density calculation by the
developed MLFNN model in comparison with Sips and Langmuir isotherms in
different temperatures.

Table 9
The statistical quality measures of the developed MLFNN model for prediction of the CO2 adsorpsion density in different ranges of dataset.

T (K) P (kPa) q (g/g) AARD ARD RMSE R2 SD

273.3 3.43366.3 0.010.809 1.25 0.6374 0.001044 0.999999 0.2809
279.4 8.93436.6 0.0180.78 0.49 0.0997 0.000812 0.999991 0.2695
290.1 11.43480.6 0.0170.69 0.48 0.0410 0.000795 0.999988 0.2331
299.1 0.81013.6 0.0020.282 4.37 0.1427 0.000702 0.999942 0.0931
310.2 0.9948.2 0.0020.228 5.12 2.5894 0.002896 0.999811 0.0712
310.5 4.93454.2 0.0050.505 2.61 2.5800 0.002774 0.999884 0.1737
319.2 0.9976.2 0.0010.205 4.58 0.6268 0.000702 0.999871 0.0563
323.3 13454.2 0.0010.435 1.05 0.1257 0.000588 0.999983 0.1458
Total 0.83480.6 0.0010.809 2.54 0.0127 0.001589 0.999948 0.2211

Table 10
The statistical quality measures of Sips isotherm for prediction of the CO2 adsorpsion density in different ranges of dataset.

T (K) P (kPa) q (g/g) AARD ARD RMSE R2 SD

273.3 3.43366.3 0.010.809 1.54 0.2843 0.00847 0.999049 0.2809
279.4 8.93436.6 0.0180.78 1.84 0.8499 0.00521 0.999609 0.2692
290.1 11.43480.6 0.0170.69 2.71 1.9714 0.00286 0.999850 0.2326
299.1 0.81013.6 0.0020.282 4.14 0.1333 0.00056 0.999962 0.0930
310.2 0.9948.2 0.0020.228 4.16 2.9931 0.00041 0.999966 0.0690
310.5 4.93454.2 0.0050.505 1.94 1.5496 0.00135 0.999940 0.1726
319.2 0.9976.2 0.0010.205 6.46 4.3358 0.00043 0.999943 0.0559
323.3 13454.2 0.0010.435 2.36 1.9242 0.00063 0.999982 0.1456
Total 0.83480.6 0.0010.809 3.19 0.9617 0.00356 0.999740 0.2210

Table 11
The statistical quality measures of Langmuir isotherm for prediction of the CO2 adsorpsion density in different ranges of dataset.

T (K) P (kPa) q (g/g) AARD ARD RMSE R2 SD

273.3 3.43366.3 0.010.809 15.74 13.4416 0.02109 0.996046 0.2905
279.4 8.93436.6 0.0180.78 18.04 15.6789 0.02295 0.995645 0.2812
290.1 11.43480.6 0.0170.69 19.39 17.1317 0.01993 0.995467 0.2425
299.1 0.81013.6 0.0020.282 21.43 20.4602 0.00423 0.998761 0.0948
310.2 0.9948.2 0.0020.228 23.18 22.0904 0.00350 0.998581 0.0705
310.5 4.93454.2 0.0050.505 15.35 13.7929 0.01014 0.997826 0.1777
319.2 0.9976.2 0.0010.205 17.61 16.6829 0.00261 0.998592 0.0570
323.3 13454.2 0.0010.435 14.47 13.3460 0.00652 0.998690 0.1489
Total 0.83480.6 0.0010.809 18.12 16.5805 0.01347 0.996949 0.2246

Please cite this article in press as: A. Rostami et al., Accurate estimation of CO2 adsorption on activated carbon with multi-layer feed-forward neural net-
work (MLFNN) algorithm, Egypt. J. Petrol. (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpe.2017.01.003
8 A. Rostami et al. / Egyptian Journal of Petroleum xxx (2017) xxxxxx

0.9 0.5
Target data Target data
0.8 0.45
MLFNN MLFNN

0.7 0.4
Adsorption density (gr/gr)

0.35

Adsorption density (gr/gr)

0.6

0.3
0.5
0.25
0.4
0.2
0.3
0.15
0.2
0.1
0.1
0.05
0
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 0
CO2 partial pressure (KPa) 0 1000 2000 3000 4000
CO2 partial pressure (KPa)
Fig. 9. Measured and MLFNN model adsorption density versus CO2 partial pressure
at the lowest temperature of 273.3 K. Fig. 11. Measured and MLFNN model adsorption density versus CO2 partial
pressure at the highest temperature of 323.3 K.

0.3
Target data ment of a promising model for determination of the CO2 adsorp-
tion density on activated carbon was presented. The foremost
MLFNN
0.25 objective of the current study was putting emphasis on improving
the capability and precision of the formerly published models for
approximation of the CO2 adsorption density on activated carbon.
Adsorption density (gr/gr)

0.2 In order to establish and assess the suggested model, a wide-

spread databank including a wide range of thermodynamic condi-
tions was gathered from the open literature. In addition,
0.15 comprehensive error analysis was conducted to clarify the effec-
tiveness of the proposed predictive MLFNN model. As a result,
the ANN-based algorithm gives highly better accuracy and perfor-
0.1
mance than the Sips and Langmuir isotherms. In addition, the
ANN-based algorithm is a universal model which is not restricted
to a constant temperature condition, although the applicability of
0.05
the Sips and Langmuir models are limited in isothermal conditions.
Consequently, it is verified that MLFNN model is a truthful and
0 consistent model for calculation of CO2 adsorption density on acti-
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 vated carbon, and also it is an achievable scheme for engineering
CO2 partial pressure (KPa) and environmental goals.

Fig. 10. Measured and MLFNN model adsorption density versus CO2 partial
pressure at the intermediate temperature of 299.1 K.
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