Chemisorption of carbon dioxide on potassium-carbonate-promoted hydrotalcite

A novel approach to environmental pollution management/remediation techniques using derived advanced materials

The carbon dioxide (CO2) crisis is one of the world's most urgent issues. Meeting the worldwide targets set for CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is crucial. Because it may significantly reduce energy consumption compared to traditional amine-based adsorption capture, adsorption dependant CO2 capture is regarded as one of the most hopeful techniques in this paradigm. The expansion of unique, critical edge adsorbent materials has received most of the research attention to date, with the main objective of improving adsorption capacity and lifespan while lowering the temperature of adsorption, thereby lowering the energy demand of sorbent revival. There are specific materials needed for each step of the carbon cycle, including capture, regeneration, and conversion. The potential and efficiency of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) in overcoming this obstacle have recently been proven through research. In this study, we pinpoint MOFs' precise structural and chemical characteristics that have contributed to their high capture capacity, effective regeneration and separation processes, and efficient catalytic conversions. As prospective materials for the next generation of energy storage and conversion applications, carbon-based compounds like graphene, carbon nanotubes, and fullerenes are receiving a lot of interest. Their distinctive physicochemical characteristics make them suitable for these popular study topics, including structural stability and flexibility, high porosity, and customizable physicochemical traits. It is possible to precisely design the interior of MOFs to include coordinatively unsaturated metal sites, certain heteroatoms, covalent functionalization, various building unit interactions, and integrated nanoscale metal catalysts. This is essential for the creation of MOFs with improved performance. Utilizing the accuracy of MOF chemistry, more complicated materials must be built to handle selectivity, capacity, and conversion all at once to achieve a comprehensive solution. This review summarizes, the most recent developments in adsorption-based CO2 combustion capture, the CO2 adsorption capacities of various classes of solid sorbents, and the significance of advanced carbon nanomaterials for environmental remediation and energy conversion. This review also addresses the difficulties and potential of developing carbon-based electrodes for energy conversion and storage applications.

Review of the Pressure Swing Adsorption Process for the Production of Biofuels and Medical Oxygen: Separation and Purification Technology

The production of biofuels has had a great impact on climate change and the reduction of the use of fossil fuels. There are different technologies used for the separation and production of biofuels, which allow having compounds such as ethanol, methane, oxygen, and hydrogen, one of these promising technologies is the Pressure Swing Adsorption process (PSA). The objectives of this article focus on the production and purification of compounds that achieve purities of 99.5% bioethanol, 94.85% biohydrogen, 95.00% medical oxygen, and 99.99% biomethane through the PSA process; also, a significant review is contemplated to identify the different natural and synthetic adsorbents that have greater adsorption capacity, the different configurations in which a PSA operates are studied and identified, and the different mathematical models that describe the dynamic behavior of all the variables are established that interact in this PSA process, parametric studies are carried out in order to identify the variables that have the greatest effect on the purity obtained. The results obtained in this review allow facilitating the calculation of parameters, the optimization of the process, the automatic control to manipulate certain variables and to achieve the rejection of disturbances to have a recovery and production of biofuels with a high degree of purity.

Numerical Simulation Approach for a Dynamically Operated Sorption-Enhanced Water-Gas Shift Reactor

A dynamically operated sorption-enhanced water–gas shift reactor is modelled to leverage its performance by means of model-based process design. This reactor shall provide CO2-free synthesis gas for e-fuel production from pure CO. The nonlinear model equations describing simultaneous adsorption and reaction are solved with three numerical approaches in MATLAB: a built-in solver for partial differential equations, a semi-discretization method in combination with an ordinary differential equation solver, and an advanced graphic implementation of the latter method in Simulink. The novel implementation in Simulink offers various advantages for dynamic simulations and is expanded to a process model with six reaction chambers. The continuous conditions in the reaction chambers and the discrete states of the valves, which enable switching between reactive adsorption and regeneration, lead to a hybrid system. Controlling the discrete states in a finite-state machine in Stateflow enables automated switching between reactive adsorption and regeneration depending on predefined conditions, such as a time span or a concentration threshold in the product gas. The established chemical reactor simulation approach features unique possibilities in terms of simulation-driven development of operating procedures for intensified reactor operation. In a base case simulation, the sorbent usage for serial operation with adjusted switching times is increased by almost 15%.

Olive Mill Wastewater Valorization through Steam Reforming Using Multifunctional Reactors: Challenges of the Process Intensification

Olive oil mill wastewater (OMW) is a polluting stream derived from the production of olive oil and is a source of environmental pollution; this is relevant in many countries around the world, but particularly in all the Mediterranean region where major producers are located. In this effluent, several pollutants are present—namely, sugars, fatty acids, and polyphenols, among others. Nowadays, to reduce the pollutant load, several treatment techniques are applied, but these technologies have numerous cost and efficiency problems. For this reason, the steam reforming of the OMW (OMWSR) presents as a good alternative, because this process decreases the pollutant load of the OMW and simultaneously valorizes the waste with the production of green H2, which is consistent with the perspective of the circular economy. Currently, the OMWSR is an innovative treatment alternative in the scientific field and with high potential. In the last few years, some groups have studied the OMWSR and used innovative reactor configurations, aiming to improve the process’ effectiveness. In this review, the OMW treatment/valorization processes, the last developments on catalysis for OMWSR (or steam reforming of similar species present in the effluent), as well as the last advances on OMWSR performed in multi-functional reactors are addressed.

Immobilization of Potassium-Based Heterogeneous Catalyst over Alumina Beads and Powder Support in the Transesterification of Waste Cooking Oil

In this work, the beads and powder potassium hydroxide (KOH) and potassium carbonate (K2CO3) supported on alumina oxide (Al2O3) were successfully prepared via incipient wetness impregnation technique. Herein, the perforated hydrophilic materials (PHM) made from low-density polyethylene (LDPE) was used as the catalyst reactor bed. The prepared catalysts were investigated using TGA, XRD, BET, SEM-EDX, TPD, FTIR while spent catalysts were analyzed using XRF and ICP-AES to study its deactivation mechanism. The catalytic performance of beads and powder KOH/Al2O3 and K2CO3/Al2O3 catalysts were evaluated via transesterification of waste cooking oil (WCO) to biodiesel. It was found that the optimum conditions for transesterification reaction were 1:12 of oil-to-methanol molar ratio and 5 wt.% of catalyst at 65 °C. As a result, the mesoporous size of beads KOH/Al2O3 and K2CO3/Al2O3 catalysts yielded 86.8% and 77.3% at 2 h’ reaction time of fatty acids methyl ester (FAME), respectively. It was revealed that the utilization of PHM for beads K2CO3/Al2O3 increase the reusability of the catalyst up to 7 cycles. Furthermore, the FAME produced was confirmed by the gas chromatography-mass spectroscopic technique. From this finding, beads KOH/Al2O3 and K2CO3/Al2O3 catalysts showed a promising performance to convert WCO to FAME or known as biodiesel.

Sorption-Enhanced Water-Gas Shift Reaction for Synthesis Gas Production from Pure CO: Investigation of Sorption Parameters and Reactor Configurations

A sorption-enhanced water-gas shift (SEWGS) system providing CO2-free synthesis gas (CO + H2) for jet fuel production from pure CO was studied. The water-gas shift (WGS) reaction was catalyzed by a commercial Cu/ZnO/Al2O3 catalyst and carried out with in-situ CO2 removal on a 20 wt% potassium-promoted hydrotalcite-derived sorbent. Catalyst activity was investigated in a fixed bed tubular reactor. Different sorbent materials and treatments were characterized by CO2 chemisorption among other analysis methods to choose a suitable sorbent. Cyclic breakthrough tests in an isothermal packed bed microchannel reactor (PBMR) were performed at significantly lower modified residence times than those reported in literature. A parameter study gave an insight into the effect of pressure, adsorption feed composition, desorption conditions, as well as reactor configuration on breakthrough delay and adsorbed amount of CO2. Special attention was paid to the steam content. The significance of water during adsorption as well as desorption confirmed the existence of different adsorption sites. Various reactor packing concepts showed that the interaction of relatively fast reaction and relatively slow adsorption kinetics plays a key role in the SEWGS process design at low residence time conditions.

System and Processes of Pre-combustion Carbon Dioxide Capture and Separation

In this chapter, the development of H2/CO2 separation technology, including a new CO2 chemical adsorbent, a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) reactor model, and the continuous operation of a pilot-scale test system for pre-combustion CO2 capture, are presented. Potassium-promoted Mg–Al layered double oxides (LDOs) are shown to be appropriate candidate adsorbents for elevated temperature (250–450 °C) PSA for pre-combustion H2/CO2 separation. The adsorption heat of CO2 on the surface of LDOs is only 2.5–60.4 kJ mol−1, which is beneficial for achieving isothermal desorption by a pressure swing. Further, methods for enhancing the CO2 capacity and the mechanical strength of adsorbent pellets are introduced. The single- and double-column fixed-bed experiments provided useful results for the development and validation of scalable modeling. The PSA model was built by coupling a non-equilibrium kinetic adsorption model and a column model. The effects of operating parameters on the H2 recovery ratio and CO2 capture ratio were studied. A 4-column pilot-scale elevated temperature PSA (ET-PSA) system was developed with a processing capacity of 4.0–6.6 Nm3 h−1 to determine the feasibility of such a system for industrial application. It achieved 1089 h of accumulated operation and 75 h of continuous operation, maintaining a CO2 removal ratio higher than 91.7%.

Arsenic adsorption by iron-aluminium hydroxide coated onto macroporous supports: Insights from X-ray absorption spectroscopy and comparison with granular ferric hydroxides

This paper evaluates the arsenic adsorption characteristics of a macroporous polymer coated with coprecipitated iron-aluminium hydroxides (MHCMP). The MHCMP adsorbent-composite fits best with a pseudo-second order model for As(III) and a pseudo-first order kinetic model for As(V). The MHCMP shows a maximum adsorption capacity of 82.3 and 49.6 mg As/g adsorbent for As(III) and As(V) ions respectively, and adsorption followed the Langmuir model. Extended X-ray absorption fine structure showed that binding of As(III) ions were confirmed to take place on the iron hydroxides coated on the MHCMP, whereas for As(V) ions the binding specificity could not be attributed to one particular metal hydroxide. As(III) formed a bidentate mononuclear complex with Fe sites, whereas As(V) indicated on a bidentate binuclear complex with Al sites or monodentate with Fe sites on the adsorbent. The column experiments were run in a well water spiked with a low concentration of As(III) (100 μg/L) and a commercially available adsorbent (GEH(®)102) based on granular iron-hydroxide was used for comparison. It was found that the MHCMP was able to treat 7 times more volume of well water as compared to GEH(®)102, maintaining the threshold concentration of less than 10 μg As/L, indicating that the MHCMP is a superior adsorbent.

Progress on sorption-enhanced reaction process for hydrogen production

Concerns about the environment and fossil fuel depletion led to the concept of “hydrogen economy”, where hydrogen is used as an energy carrier. Nowadays, hydrogen is mostly produced from fossil fuel resources by natural gas reforming, coal gasification, as well as the water-gas-shift (WGS) reaction involved in these processes. Alternatively, bioethanol, glucose, glycerol, bio-oil, and other renewable biomass-derived feedstocks can also be employed for hydrogen production via steam reforming process. The combination of steam reforming and/or WGS reaction with

Molecular dynamics study on structure evolution of monocarboxylic acid intercalated layered double hydroxides

Classical molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to investigate the atomistic structures of monocarboxylic acid intercalated LDHs – a promising candidate for solid sorbents for carbon dioxide capture at intermediate temperatures.

Hydrothermal synthesis of K2CO3-promoted hydrotalcite from hydroxide-form precursors for novel high-temperature CO2 sorbent

In many materials for CO2 sorption, hydrotalcite is attracting substantial attention as a high temperature (200-500 °C) CO2 sorbent because of its fast sorption/desorption kinetics and easy regenerability. However, the CO2-sorption capacity of conventional hydrotalcite is relatively low for large-scale commercial use. To enhance CO2-sorption capacity, hydrotalcite is conventionally impregnated with alkali metals such as K2CO3. Although K2CO3-impregnated hydrotalcite has high CO2-sorption capacity, the preparation method takes long time and is inconvenient because hydrotalcite synthesis step and alkali metal impregnation step are separated. In this study, K2CO3-promoted hydrotalcite was newly synthesized from hydroxide-form percursors by a simple and eco-friendly method without a solvent-consuming washing step. Analysis based on X-ray diffraction indicated that the prepared samples had structures of well-defined hydrotalcite crystalline and un-reacted Mg(OH)2 precursor. Moreover, K2CO3 was successfully incorporated in hydrotalcite during the synthesis step. The prepared K2CO3-promoted hydrotalcite showed high CO2-sorption capacity and had potential for use as a high-temperature CO2 sorbent.

Evaluation of moisture effect on low-level CO2 adsorption by ion-exchanged zeolite

To enhance the capture of low-level indoor CO2, a commercial zeolite (13X) was modified with alkali and alkaline earth metals using an ion-exchange method. Although the calcium-impregnated sorbent (zeo-Ca) showed the largest adsorption capacity, with a strong binding force for carbon dioxide, its regeneration by heat treatment was very difficult. Moisture in the gas flow caused significant decreases in CO2 adsorption capability as well as in the lifetime of the adsorbents. As for the regeneration gas, the test showed that nitrogen would hinder the CO2 adsorption more significantly than helium gas. Water vapour and nitrogen gas molecules are apt to competitively occupy the available sites of the adsorbent over the CO2 molecules.

The effect of trivalent cations on the performance of Mg-M-CO(3) layered double hydroxides for high-temperature CO(2) capture

The effect of trivalent cations on the performance of Mg-M-CO(3) (M=Al, Fe, Ga, Mn) layered double hydroxides (LDHs) for high-temperature CO(2) capture is systematically investigated for the first time. We demonstrate that the M(3+) determines the structure evolution of LDH derivatives under thermal treatment, and finally influences the CO(2) capture capacity. Very different calcination temperatures are required for the different LDHs to obtain their maximum CO(2) capture capacities. To have a clear understanding of the reason behind these big differences the physicochemical properties, thermal stability, and memory effect of the LDHs were investigated. Both the thermal stability and the memory effect of LDHs are greatly influenced by the type of trivalent cation. The CO(2) capture capacities were also evaluated under various conditions. Another important finding of this work is that the quasi-amorphous phase obtained by thermal treatment at the lowest possible temperature gives the highest CO(2) capture capacity.