(210j) 3D-Printed Monolithic Adsorbents for Gas Separation Processes

Structured adsorbents especially in the form of monolithic contactors offer an excellent gas-solid contacting strategy for development of practical and scalable CO₂ capture technologies. In this study, the fabrication of 3D-printed 13X and 5A zeolite monoliths with novel structures and their use in CO₂ removal from air are reported. The physical and structural properties of these printed monoliths are evaluated and compared with their powder counterparts. Our results indicate that 3D-printed monoliths with zeolite loading as high as 90 wt% exhibit comparable adsorption uptake to powder sorbents. The adsorption capacities of 5A and 13X monoliths were found to be 1.59 and 1.60 mmol/g, respectively using 5000 ppm (0.5%) CO₂ in nitrogen at room temperature. The dynamic CO₂/N₂ breakthrough experiments show relatively fast dynamics for monolithic structures. In addition, the printed zeolite monoliths show reasonably good mechanical stability that can eventually prevent attrition and dusting issues commonly encountered in traditional pellets and beads packing systems. Moreover, our recent work on the fabrication and evaluation of 3D-printed aminosilica adsorbents will be discussed. The 3D printing technique offers an alternative cost-effective and facile approach to fabricate structured adsorbents with tunable structural, chemical and mechanical properties for use in gas separation processes.