(696c) Diversification of Basic Immobilized Amine Sorbents (BIAS) for Carbon Dioxide Capture

Carbon sequestration entails a multi-step process in which anthropogenic CO₂ emissions are captured from CO₂-laden process gas streams and permanently stored. Carbon capture is a critical step in the process and accounts for a considerable portion of the overall cost. Across the literature, a multitude of functionalized silica sorbents demonstrate high-capacity CO₂ capture and offer advantages over the benchmark liquid monoethanolamine (MEA) process, including reduced heat duty and improved CO₂ mass transfer. However, low sorbent stability still remains an issue. Basic immobilized amine sorbents (BIAS) developed at NETL were successfully tested at bench and pilot-scales, and demonstrated their promising potential for large scale CO₂ removal from post-combustion sources and ambient air. This is owed to the BIAS’ optimized tradeoff between CO₂ capture capacity and thermal stability observed over multiple and even 100 adsorption-desorption cycles. Within the last few years, key technological milestones diversifying the commercialization potential of the BIAS were achieved. These include in house (bench scale, 10 g) and commercial (3 kg) pelletization of particles into rods and spheres for moving bed rectors; incorporation into a non-aqueous particle/silicone oil slurry regenerated by microwave irradiation for replacing/retro-fitting the MEA process; and spinning into hollow chemisorption fiber sorbents (CHEFS) for rapid temperature swing adsorption systems. The proven scalability of BIAS combined with the diverse portfolio of material architecture makes this technology ideal for industrial CO₂ capture applications, including for coal combustion and gasification power generating systems; landfill gas cleanup, enhanced oil recovery (EOR); natural gas sweetening, and life support systems.