(484b) Amine Impregnated N-Doped Mesoporous Carbon for Selective CO2 Capture

Carbon dioxide is a major component of the greenhouse gases. It is expected that the atmospheric CO₂ level will continue to increase over the current concentration of approximately 390 ppm in the near future, as fossil fuels remain the major source utilized to meet global energy demand. Carbon capture and storage is a technology developed to prevent release of large quantities of CO₂ into the atmosphere from power generation by capturing CO₂ and securely storing it away from the atmosphere. However, current state-of-the-art technology for CO₂capture is to use liquid phase amine scrubbing, which is corrosive and energy intensive due to high heating capacity of water during solvent regeneration. On the other hand, solid sorbent material adsorbs CO2 via physisorption, which requires less energy for regeneration. Therefore, porous carbon with high thermal conductivity is desirable for such application. With improved kinetics in adsorption and desorption processes, separation column required is smaller and the overall cost of the power plant is lower.

Mesoporous carbons are promising for CO₂ capture due to chemical inertness, low cost, high surface area and tunable pore structures. Its porous structure allows addition of chemical functionality by grafting or impregnation. Amine chemistry tells us that nitrogen functionalization plays an important role in surface chemistry to achieve high CO₂ adsorption capacity. We report here an ordered mesoporous carbon made using co-assembly of modified-pyrrole and triblock copolymer. To increase the nitrogen content of the adsorbent, nitrogen is incorporated into porous carbon framework and further functionalized with amines. Another potential benefit is that the thermal conductivity of mesoporous carbon is much higher than its silica counterpart, resulting in a faster regeneration step with enhanced stability using temperature swing process. These overall properties of mesoporous carbon made from conducting polymer made it a desirable material for CO2 capture.