(30c) Engineering Supported Amine Adsorbents for CO2 Capture Applications

Z. Xie, C. F. Cogswell and S. Choi

Department of Chemical Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston MA, 02115

Given current models showing a clear link between global climate change and rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and the likelihood of our continued use of fossil fuel energy sources in the next decades, it has become one of the major goals of researchers to obtain effective methods for the capture of carbon dioxide.¹ While the use of liquid amine scrubbers in industrial settings is the current state of the art, many groups have focused on the use of supported amine solid sorbents because of their clear advantages including high capture capacities, low heats required for sorbent regeneration, and significantly less costly operation compared to volatile amine scrubbers.²

Supported amine research up to this point has mostly focused on the amine molecules, including the effect of amine incorporation mechanism and type of amines integrated within the hybrids. For instance, the way amine is added to the porous supports has been studied extensively, which led to the creation of different types of solid amines such as class 1, 2, and 3 hybrid adsorbents.^1,2 Major research interests in this research direction have been placed to the comparative studies on these different classes of supported amine sorbents in perspective of their adsorption capacity, adsorption kinetics, and sorbent regenerability that are affected by different amine-support interactions.

More recently, there have been growing research interests on the role of the support materials.³ Considering the fact that the supported amine adsorbents are composed of both amine molecules and porous supports, this research direction is expected to enhance the performance of the current supported amine adsorbents, while improving our current understanding about the structure-property-relations of the supported amine materials even further.^{4, 5} Major research interests in this research direction includes the effect of the pore structures of the support, the effect of the heteroatoms integrated in the support, etc. onto the CO₂ adsorption characteristics of the hybrids.

Through this presentation in honor of Prof. Christopher Jones for receiving the Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering, we will discuss the continuous research efforts we have been made on the supported amines, along with recent research results obtained in this research field.

References:

1. S. Choi, J. H. Drese and C. W. Jones, ChemSusChem, 2009, 2, 796–854.

2. D. Andirova, Y. Lei, X. D. Zhao, S. Choi, ChemSusChem, 2015, 8 (20), 3405-3409

3. D. Andirova, C. F. Cogswell, Y. Lei, S. Choi, Micropor. Mesopor. Mat., 2016, 219, 276–305.

4. C. F. Cogswell, S. Choi et al., Langmuir, 2015, 31, 4534−4541.

5. C. F. Cogswell, S. Choi et al., J. Mater. Chem. A, 2017, DOI: 10.1039/C7TA01616F