Stable aminopolymer-silica hybrid material capable of capturing CO2 reversibly from simulated flue gas

FUEL 108

Jason C. Hicks, jason.hicks@chbe.gatech.edu1, Jeffrey H. Drese, jeffrey.drese@chbe.gatech.edu1, Daniel J. Fauth, fauth@netl.doe.gov2, McMahan L. Gray3, and Christopher W. Jones, cjones@chbe.gatech.edu4. (1) School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 311 Ferst Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30332-0100, (2) National Energy Technology Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, P.O. Box 10940, Pittsburgh, PA 15236-0940, (3) National Energy Technology Laboratory, United States Department of Energy, P.O. Box 10940, Pittsburgh, PA 15236-0940, (4) School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 311 Ferst Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30332-0100
Carbon dioxide capture and sequestration is an important technology for curtailing greenhouse gas emissions. Undoubtedly, one of the largest sources of human-generated CO2 is from coal-fired power plants. Thus, there has been a recent emphasis on assessing current CO2 separation technologies for application to dilute CO2 streams with large water contents, as well as developing new technologies for this separation. One of the most promising is adsorptive separation using amine-modified organic or inorganic polymer sorbents. Unfortunately, a significant drawback with sorbents of this type has been low CO2 sorbent capacities, requiring very large masses of (usually expensive) adsorbent.

In this talk, we will describe a new, rationally designed hybrid sorbent comprised of an aminopolymer covalently tethered to silica. This material has one of the highest adsorption capacities reported in the open literature under realistic flue gas conditions. The material is low cost, owing to the simple method of synthesizing the adsorbent. In addition, the adsorbent can be used with effectively no change in capacity over multiple cycles (10 or more times), demonstrating the potential to have the durability needed for practical application.