Summary This paper presents the thermodynamic modeling of a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) unit for hydrogen separation from a syngas mixture, which can be obtained from biomass gasification. Two different types of activated carbon (A‐20 and Maxsorb III) have been considered for CO2 adsorption from the gas and the variations in the adsorber bed size and energy transfer have been analyzed at different adsorption pressure, ranging from 2000 to 4000 kPa, and at 320 K temperature. CaX Zeolite has been utilized for the adsorption of other constituents (N2 and CH4) in the gas mixture. The bed size decreases while the energy consumption in the process increases with the increase in adsorption pressure. The decrease in bed size is found to be 48%–50%, and the energy consumption increases by 31%–32% over the range of adsorption pressure and for the adsorbent materials considered. Allowing the minor components (N2 and CH4) with hydrogen (without separating them from the gas) drastically reduces the bed size and energy consumption. This reduction of bed size is found to be around 70% for A‐20 and 85% for Maxsorb III, and the decrease in power consumption is around 25% for either of the adsorbents. Maxsorb III has been found to be a better CO2 adsorbent with higher working bed capacity than A‐20. The analysis has also been extended to 300 K bed temperature for Maxsorb III adsorbent to identify the effect of bed temperature on the adsorption process. At this temperature, a decrease of around 30% in column volume and a hike of 27%–35% in the energy consumption have been observed in the aforesaid adsorption pressure range. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Summary This article presents an innovative perspective of using a gravity energy storage system namely gravity power module (GPM) around a multi‐storied building. Two number of GPMs have been vertically fixed around the walls of a multi‐storied building and have not been placed underground following the traditional way. The grid‐connected proposed hybrid system consisting of solar PV, GPMs and vanadium redox flow battery is focused to supply the maximum possible amount of an essential load of a high‐riser, through renewable energy. All of the storage systems are charged through solar PV. Whereas, the grid is used, to procure energy for the unmet load demand and sell the excess renewable energy. Results simulated for each month following seasonal load variation show that net energy supplied by the hybrid system is 99% of the full load demand of essential equipment of the building for the month of February and 90% to 91% for the month of January, November and December. During all the months, the supply of gravity energy storage is restricted to supply within the 18th to 24th hour to reduce the peak demand of the grid. The gravity energy storage is also considered as the primary storage system during those intervals. The yearly average of energy supply from the renewable resource in the proposed system toward the building load is found to be 47.77%. While considering the renewable energy sale toward the grid along the load supply of the building the yearly average of renewable energy penetration becomes 48.89%.