Adsorbent materials for carbon dioxide capture

The urgent need for strategies to reduce global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, CO2, has prompted a rapid growth in research activities for CO2 capture, storage and utilization. This technology would offer the opportunity to meet increasing demands for fossil fuel energy in the short- to medium-term, whilst reducing CO2 emissions in line with global targets.
To economically sequester CO2, a cost-effective capture process to generate a concentrated CO2 stream needs to be developed. Adsorption on porous solids has gained considerable attention as a viable alternative to reduce the costs associated with currently used, high energy-demanding aqueous amine scrubbing technologies for CO2 capture. Porous solid adsorbents can operate via weak physisorption processes or strong chemisorption interactions and they are employed in unsteady and cyclic processes composed of adsorption and regeneration steps. Solid sorbents with superior performance and desired economics are the targeted materials for the CO2 separation process. An ideal CO2 adsorbent should exhibit high adsorption capacity, great selectivity, fast adsorption/desorption kinetics under the operating conditions, mechanical strength, chemical stability, tolerance to impurities, and regenerability and multicycle stability. This seminar will mainly focus on low-temperature carbon-based adsorbents as attractive materials for the separation of CO2 from post-combustion gas, i.e., CO2/N2 gas mixtures, and pre-combustion gas, i.e., CO2/H2 gas mixtures.