(494g) Carbon Dioxide Capture Performance Characterization of Mesoporous Carbon Impregnated with Triethylenetetraamine

The increasing world’s population followed by increasing energy consumption leads to unprecedented elevating concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon Dioxide Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) technology has a great potential to reduce the impact of increasing carbon dioxide emission which is causing climate change. Conventional carbon capture method of absorption by amine solvent poses several limitations such as high energy consumption for regeneration, corrosive to the equipment and environmental issues. Meanwhile, adsorption by solid adsorbents is more environmentally friendly technology and represents a low-energy consumption process. Among carbon dioxide adsorbents, porous carbon material emerged as one of the most versatile adsorbent materials due to its high surface area and selectivity, and easiness for surface modification and handling. Amine functionalization of porous carbon material also provides advantages such as reduced corrosion problems and energy consumption for regeneration.

In this research, mesoporous carbon (MC) was impregnated with Triethylenetetraamine (TETA) to increase the adsorption ability and selectivity towards carbon dioxide. Mesoporous carbon is chosen as it has a larger surface area to accommodate a large number of amines compared to the commercial activated carbon, which mainly consists of micropores. The resulting material of MC and MC-TETA was characterized with XRD and SEM-EDX. XRD results showed that the MC has a graphitic carbon structure with peaks at 2θ around 24° and 43°. The broad diffraction peaks in wide-angle XRD indicate that the resulting material is amorphous. Meanwhile, from SEM-EDX characterization of both MC and MC-TETA showed the presence of N element in MC-TETA, which indicates that MC-TETA was successfully modified with amine group. The carbon dioxide uptake properties of MC and MC-TETA were further evaluated. In addition, to explore the reusability of the material, the material was regenerated under nitrogen flow at 100°C and the desorbed amount of CO₂ was calculated. Based on the CO₂ adsorption performance results, amine impregnation with TETA has successfully increased the adsorption ability compared to mesoporous carbon without modification.