Synthesis of metal substituted hydrotalcite sorbents for industrial carbon capture (2016-17) (2016-17)

Hydrotalcites have attracted an increasing level of interest in the scientific community, specifically on using this material for applications such as CO2 capture, ion exchange, fire retardants and base catalysis. Hydrotalcites are a type of layered-double hydroxides. They consist of layers with positive charges and brucite like structure. The positive charges are balanced by anions.
The most commonly studied hydrotalcites are synthesised with Mg2+ and Al3+ salts as precursors. For carbon capture, literature studies typically use hydrotalcites with an Mg/Al ratio of ~3 as the de-facto standard material. This is because this material is generally regarded to have good CO2 capture performance over a wide range of different operating conditions. Recent studies have reported that hydrotalcites with high Mg/Al ratios have enhanced CO2 capacity. They investigated hydrotalcites with Mg/Al ratios up to 30.
In this project, we will synthesise substituted hydrotalcites by replacing Al with other metals. Various metal substitutions of Al have been tested, including Fe3+ and Ga3+, but very little work has been carried out on varying the Mg/M3+ ratios on completely substituted hydrotalcites. The main aim of this project is to synthesise high Mg/M3+ ratios hydrotalcites and to examine their performance for CO2 sorption, as well as comparing them with the high ratio Mg/Al hydrotalcite.

Supervisor name: 
Dr Susana Garcia
Supervisor email addresses: 
s.garcia@hw.ac.uk

MSc programme:

Project location: 
CICCS labs (John Coulson Building)
Deputy name: 
Prof Mercedes Maroto-Valer