The emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) from combustion of fossil fuels (such as coal, oil and natural gas) increase much more rapidly, arousing worldwide concern on the global climate change. Carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) has been considered as a promising option to mitigate CO2 emissions. Here, we report using aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) as an additive to promote the performance of PEI-based molecular basket sorbent for CO2 capture from flue gas. Compared to 30PEI/SiO2, the APTES-promoted 30PEI/SiO2 sorbents exhibited higher CO2 capacity within the APTES loading range of 10-70 wt%, showing a strong synergetic effect of PEI and APTES for CO2 capture. When 80 wt% of APTES was loaded, however, its capacity for CO2 dropped significantly due likely to the significant decrease in both the surface area and accessible amine sites. The best CO2 capacity was obtained at APTES loading of 30wt%, which was increased by over 40% than that of 30PEI/SiO2 sorbent. In addition, the thermal stability of APTES-promoted 30PEI/SiO2 sorbents was improved based on the TGA decomposition results. Furthermore, the CO2 sorption rate was calculated from TGA profile and compared. It was ~125% faster over 30PEI-30APTES/SiO2 (6.9 %/min) than that of 30PEI/SiO2 (5.5 %/min) at 75 °C. The results demonstrate that the addition of APTES can not only enhance CO2 sorption over molecular basket sorbent, but also promote its sorption kinetics and thermal stability. The present work provides another general approach to design high performance CO2 solid sorbents and may have a major impact on the advance of CCUS technologies.

APTES-promoted molecular basket sorbents for CO2 capture from flue gas

256th National Meeting (2018)

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