(383an) Cost-Efficient Direct Air Capture Via Thermal Coupling with LNG Regasification

Direct air capture (DAC) is a vital component for mitigating global warming, but even with the most potent sorbent, supported amine materials, its deployment is limited by high capital costs. Recently, physisorbents have gathered interest for DAC at sub ambient temperatures (~ -20 ^oC) due to fast adsorption kinetics. However, they require a water removal process and do not have sufficient CO₂ working capacity. In this study, we hypothesized that integration with an untapped source of cold energy, Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) regasification, can enable cost efficient DAC using physisorbents. The potential of the LNG-DAC was first examined using large scale molecular simulations on the CoRE-MOF database. Based on the result, adsorption equilibrium of MIL-120(Al), Zeolite 13X, and Zeolite 5A were examined experimentally. Zeolite 13X was further examined by breakthrough analysis and its high working capacity (~5 mmol/g) leaded to promising energy (~1.84 GJ/tCO₂) and capital costs.