Direct CO2 Capture from Air via Crystallization with a Trichelating Iminoguanidine Ligand

Quaternized Graphene for High-Performance Moisture Swing Direct Air Capture of CO2

Nowadays, moisture-swing adsorption technology still relies on quaternary ammonium resins with limited CO2 capacity under ambient air conditions. In this work, a groundbreaking moisture-driven sorbent is developed starting from commercial graphene flakes and using glycidyltrimethylammonium chloride for incorporation of CO2-sensitive quaternary ammonium functional groups. Boasting an outstanding CO2 capture performance under ultra-diluted conditions (namely, 3.24 mmol g-1 at CO2 400 ppm and 20% RH), the functionalized sorbent (fGO) features clear competitive advantages over current technologies for direct air capture. Notably, fGO demonstrated unprecedented moisture-swing capacity, ease of regenerability, versatility, selectivity, and longevity. These distinctive features position the fGO as an advanced and promising solution, showcasing its potential to outperform existing methods for moisture-swing direct air capture of CO2.

Emerging trends in direct air capture of CO2: a review of technology options targeting net-zero emissions

The increasing concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has compelled researchers and policymakers to seek urgent solutions to address the current global climate change challenges. In order to keep the global mean temperature at approximately 1.5 °C above the preindustrial era, the world needs increased deployment of negative emission technologies. Among all the negative emissions technologies reported, direct air capture (DAC) is positioned to deliver the needed CO2 removal in the atmosphere. DAC technology is independent of the emissions origin, and the capture machine can be located close to the storage or utilization sites or in a location where renewable energy is abundant or where the price of energy is low-cost. Notwithstanding these inherent qualities, DAC technology still has a few drawbacks that need to be addressed before the technology can be widely deployed. As a result, this review focuses on emerging trends in direct air capture (DAC) of CO2, the main drivers of DAC systems, and the required development for commercialization. The main findings point to undeniable facts that DAC's overall system energy requirement is high, and it is the main bottleneck in DAC commercialization.

Direct Air Capture of CO2 Using a Liquid Amine-Solid Carbamic Acid Phase-Separation System Using Diamines Bearing an Aminocyclohexyl Group

The phase separation between a liquid amine and the solid carbamic acid exhibited >99% CO₂ removal efficiency under a 400 ppm CO₂ flow system using diamines bearing an aminocyclohexyl group. Among them, isophorone diamine [IPDA; 3-(aminomethyl)-3,5,5-trimethylcyclohexylamine] exhibited the highest CO₂ removal efficiency. IPDA reacted with CO₂ in a CO₂/IPDA molar ratio of ≥1 even in H₂O as a solvent. The captured CO₂ was completely desorbed at 333 K because the dissolved carbamate ion releases CO₂ at low temperatures. The reusability of IPDA under CO₂ adsorption-and-desorption cycles without degradation, the >99% efficiency kept for 100 h under direct air capture conditions, and the high CO₂ capture rate (201 mmol/h for 1 mol of amine) suggest that the phase separation system using IPDA is robust and durable for practical use.

Strong bases behave as weak bases in nanoscale chemical environments: implication in humidity-swing CO2 air capture

Hydration of ions/molecules in nanometer-sized clusters or nanoscopic pores is ubiquitous and plays a key role in many chemical and physical systems. In this work, guanidine-H2O reactions with n = 1-8 water molecules were systematically studied by ab initio methods. The result suggests that the reduced availability of water molecules greatly inhibits the strong base guanidine from producing OH-. That is, guanidine exhibits the behavior of a weak bases in low-humidity nanoscale environments. Intriguingly, this effect is not limited to guanidine but could be applied to other strong bases. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the direction of guanidine-CO2 reactions can be controlled by changing the number of water molecules present, which in turn responds to the humidity change in air. These findings not only shed some light on unconventional chemical reactions of strong bases in atmospheric clusters and on solid porous surfaces, but also provide insights into the development of guanidine-based CO2 air-capture sorbents.