Searching for a cost-effective method of determining sorption properties for the industrial use of CO2 capture

Abstract

The study focuses on laboratory testing of carbon-dioxide adsorption. It compares three methods used to determine the capacity of the adsorbents proposed for CO2 capture. The tests have been performed on two samples, namely natural clinoptilolite and a 13X molecular sieve. Two methods were dynamic and one was static. The first dynamic method evaluated the capacity based on the change in CO2 volume fraction before and after a fixed-bed adsorber. For the same purpose, the second dynamic method used a gravimetric procedure. The static method detected a change in pressure during CO2 adsorption. The capacities determined for carbon-dioxide mole fractions of 5, 10, 13 and 20% at temperatures of 30 and 40 °C at atmospheric pressure were compared. The apparatus with a fixed-bed adsorber made it possible to perform tests also for overpressures of 2 and 5 bar and lower temperatures. The capacity obtained on the three apparatuses showed good agreement. The maximum capacity (3.32 mmol g−1) was determined for the 13X sample at 10 °C and a partial CO2 pressure of 120 kPa and, conversely, the lowest (0.12 mmol g−1) for clinoptilolite at 40 °C and a partial CO2 pressure of 5 kPa. There was no significant difference in capacity standard deviations between the apparatus (0.014–0.036 mmol g−1). The fixed-bed apparatus required one to three orders of magnitude more gas for the experiment and was more challenging to operate and evaluate the data.