3D Printed PEI Containing Adsorbents Supported by Carbon Nanostructures for Post-combustion Carbon Capture From Biomass Fired Power Plants

Shreenath Krishnamurthy,Vesna Middelkoop,Kari Anne Andreassen,Marleen Rombouts,Adolfo Benedito Borras,Richard Blom

doi:10.3389/fclim.2021.733499

Shreenath Krishnamurthy, Vesna Middelkoop + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2021.733499

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Abstract

Processes that utilize solid adsorbents to capture CO2 are promising alternatives to state-of-art Amine based technologies for capturing CO2 from large point sources. Although the energy needs of solid sorbent-based processes are low, the process footprint and consequently the capital cost connected to its implementation can be large due to the relatively long cycle times needed to get the required purity and recovery of the CO2 product. To overcome this challenge, processes having structured adsorbents like laminates, monoliths etc. are needed due to their low pressure drop and better mass transfer characteristics. The aim of this multiscale study is to evaluate the process-based performance of a 3D printed sorbent containing polyethyleneimine (PEI) and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) for capturing CO2 from a biomass fired power plant flue gas. A 6-step vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) cycle was simulated and optimized using equilibrium and kinetics data obtained from volumetry and breakthrough experiments. The optimization study showed that it was possible to achieve purity values &gt;95% and recovery values &gt;90% from dry CO2 feed streams containing 10 and 15% CO2 respectively. The minimum specific energy values were 0.94 and 0.6 MJ/kg and maximum productivity values were 0.8 and 2.2 mol/m3 ads s, respectively, for the two scenarios.

Highlights

It is widely acknowledged that carbon capture from large point sources like power plants is advocated as a possible solution to reduce the global CO2 emissions and achieve the goals set by the Paris agreement in 2015 (IPCC, 2018)
Formulation of the past included the following materials: multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT); grade NC7000; batch A2199 from NANOCYL (Sambreville, Belgium); polyethyleneimine (PEI) with 70,000 Dalton from TCI (Japan); anionic surfactant UBEDISP1d83-N2 from UBE Corporation Europe (Castellón, Spain); and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) grade Nichigo G-Polymer OKS-8077P from Nippon Gohsei (Osaka, Japan), a dissolved polymer binder commonly used in waterborne formulations to make minor adjustments to the rheological properties of the paste
The BET surface area was found to be 27 m2/g. This value is an order of magnitude lower in comparison with that of a pure MWCNT (Freitas et al, 2021)

Summary

Introduction

It is widely acknowledged that carbon capture from large point sources like power plants is advocated as a possible solution to reduce the global CO2 emissions and achieve the goals set by the Paris agreement in 2015 (IPCC, 2018). Biomass is an organic matter available from plant and animal sources such as wood chips (Dell’antonia et al, 2012), saw dust (Fogarasi and Cormos, 2017), garbage (Pan et al, 2020), and animal wastes (Bijarchiyan et al, 2020; Lisbona et al, 2021) and are possible sources of renewable energy. It is beneficial for reducing emissions as it produces lower CO2 and SOX in comparison with fossil fuels (Ali et al, 2017). In case of a PSA process, the regeneration of the solid is carried out by reducing the pressure (Vacuum/atmospheric pressure) of the column and this can potentially reduce the energy consumption as well as avoiding long heating and cooling times that are typical of a temperature-based regeneration process

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