Metal oxide catalyst-aided solvent regeneration: A promising method to economize post-combustion CO2 capture process

Umair H. Bhatti, Dharmalingam Sivanesan, Dae Ho Lim, Sung Chan Nam, Sungyoul Park*, Il Hyun Baek

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    61 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    Despite the in-depth understanding of the amine-based post-combustion CO2 capture technique gained by research efforts made over the decades, its large-scale practicality is hindered by extensive energy input in desorption and solvent degradation issues. The most thoroughly studied alkanolamine solvent, monoethanolamine (MEA), is still unable to capture a significant portion of CO2 emissions at a bearable economic penalty, owing to these serious drawbacks. Herein, we demonstrate catalytic regeneration of MEA solvent with five commercially available metal oxide catalysts ̶ Ag2O, Nb2O5, NiO, CuO, and MnO2 which would render this process suitable for achieving a bearable penalty. CO2-rich MEA solvent with an initial loading of 0.50 mol CO2/mol MEA was used in this study. A temperature range of interest was selected to perform the experiments in order to identify the optimal operating temperature for each of the catalysts used in this study. The results show that all of the catalysts used in this study improve the MEA regeneration where Ag2O presents the best regeneration performance followed by Nb2O5 by desorbing up to 3.6 and 2.5 times greater CO2 amounts with faster desorption rates, respectively. Overall, the results show that the MEA solvent can be regenerated at temperature as low as 80 °C, and hence a significant reduction in heat requirement for solvent regeneration is possible. Besides, at this temperature, thermal degradation of the solvent can be avoided completely. Furthermore, as a considerable improvement in the CO2 desorption rate and cyclic capacity is achieved by the catalytic regeneration process, the size of the stripper and the solvent circulation rate can be reduced, which will decrease the capital and operating cost as well.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Pages (from-to)150-157
    Number of pages8
    JournalJournal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers
    Volume93
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Dec 2018

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    This work was supported by “Next Generation Carbon Upcycling Project” (Project no. 2017M1A2A2043151 ) through the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT , Republic of Korea.

    Funding Information:
    This work was supported by “Next Generation Carbon Upcycling Project” (Project no. 2017M1A2A2043151) through the National Research Foundation (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT, Republic of Korea.

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2018

    Keywords

    • Catalytic regeneration
    • Cyclic capacity
    • MEA
    • Metal oxide
    • Post-combustion CO capture

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General Chemistry
    • General Chemical Engineering

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