Accurate correlation, structural interpretation, and thermochemistry of equilibrium adsorption isotherms of carbon dioxide in zeolite NaX by means of the GSTA model

Abstract

Zeolite NaX (commonly known as zeolite 13X) has found wide use in industry for the separation of carbon dioxide from air, methane-containing landfill gas, and flue gases. Capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide has become of utmost importance to mitigate severe environmental problems associated to burning of fossil fuels, such as the greenhouse effect and the consequential warming of global climate. Due to its low energy consumption and ease of operation, the zeolite-13X molecular-sieve pressure-swing adsorption process has become the method of choice for the recovery and capture of carbon dioxide from air and flue gas. Accurate correlation of the equilibrium adsorption isotherms of carbon dioxide in zeolite NaX is required for the reliable modeling and simulation of that process. In this paper, we firstly show that none of the traditional adsorption isotherm models (such as those of Langmuir, Sips, Toth, UNILAN, and Dubinin–Astakhov) is entirely capable of correlating a published set of equilibrium adsorption isotherms of carbon dioxide in zeolite NaX that were measured over a range of eight decades of pressure. A generalized statistical thermodynamic adsorption (GSTA) model, which we had already derived and successfully applied to the adsorption of water vapor in zeolite 3A, is employed in this work to obtain a very accurate correlation of that set of adsorption isotherms of carbon dioxide in zeolite NaX, for the pressure range from 0.2 Pa to 6.4 MPa and in the temperature range from −78 to 150 °C. We also provide thermochemical and structural interpretations of the isotherms fit and make predictions for the isosteric heat of adsorption that are in excellent agreement with the available experimental data.