Zihang Zhang

Energy Efficient Absorbents for Industry Promising Carbon Dioxide Capture

There are growing concerns that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are contributing to global climate change. CO2 capture and sequestration system is an effective way to alleviate this phenomenon. Chemical absorption of CO2 is a mature and efficient way to capture CO2 from industrial flue gas. Amines are the most commonly discussed solvent, such as NH3 as inorganic solvent and monoethanolamine (MEA) as the typical alkanolamine. MEA aqueous solutions have been widely analyzed and achieved good performance. However, the energy cost for the amine regeneration remains great which barricades its widely industrial application. Several energy efficient absorbents are currently discussed from the perspective of the reaction kinetics, desorption efficiency and sensible heat consumption. These discussions show that the absorbents with higher reaction rate and mass transfer coefficient and advanced process can reduce the sensible heat (less consumption of absorbent) and reaction heat, which thus make them as the energy efficient absorbents.