Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have become one of the most important issues currently facing humanity. One of the major sources of CO2 is from the combustion of fossil fuels in power plants. As such, novel materials are needed for post-combustion carbon capture in order to circumvent this problem. As part of ongoing attempt to study gas capture and separation, we have developed a series of Porous Polymer Networks (PPNs) made form mesoporous melamine-formaldehyde resins (mPMFs) that, upon loading with amines, can function as efficient CO2 sorbents under industrially relevant flue gas conditions. Our sorbent series is differentiated from previous mPMFs by the presence of a series of chemical dopants added to the polymer synthesis. Our system does not require extensive chemical synthesis and instead takes advantage of the functional groups inherent to the dopants to ensure the amines stay loaded within the system, yielding improved cycling performance. In addition, our solid sorbents maintain a lower regenerative energy demand compared the current state-of-the-art, aqueous monoethanolamine (MEA) solutions. Dopant functionality also allows us to tune the adsorptive properties of our materials, allowing our system to be tailored for a large variety of working conditions. Our PPN series can easily be produced at the bench scale and thus represents a viable alternative to the currently utilized MEA solutions.

Improving CO2 capture performance by incorporating functionalized materials into porous polymer networks

255th National Meeting (2018)

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