The interest in CO2 capture from industrial flue gases using solid sorbents, i.e., adsorbents has led to the disclosure of hundreds of novel structures, particularly metal organic frameworks and other micro/meso-porous solids. While these materials show some remarkable CO2 adsorption properties, their performance has been rather modest when used in an adsorption process. In this presentation we explore the question “What adsorbent properties represent the performance characteristics of a particular material at a process scale?”. The process performance described by productivity and energy consumption under certain target purity and recovery constraints is evaluated using detailed process modeling and optimization that explicitly takes into account process configurations, the movement of heat and mass transfer fronts and process constraints. The result of these studies indicates that screening metrics that are typically used to select an adsorbent are often poor indicators, while qualities that are often overlooked during early stage-development control the process performance.  The presentation will also demonstrate how process optimization can be used as an effective tool for screening adsorbents and by extension to develop new ones.

Enabling adsorbent screening  for post-combustion CO2 capture through process optimization

255th National Meeting (2018)

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