Advances on CO2 storage. Synthetic porous solids, mineralization and alternative solutions

Abstract

Carbon Dioxide (CO2), produced naturally, is the primary carbon source for life on Earth. In the pre-industrial period, it was regulated by photosynthetic organisms and geological phenomena. The increasingly growing industrial CO2 emissions drive the research and development aiming at discovering new approaches to capture the bulk of CO2 emissions from different sources and further (i) sequester it at different storage sites, (ii) use it in different sectors for production of valuable commodities. In a perspective view aiming to exploit the enriched CO2, it is sometimes mandatory to store it temporarily in pure or likely pure gas form, before performing another purification or use cycle. In this review, we give an overview about the adsorbed-phase CO2 storage as a critical or complementary step, in the expected future deployment of carbon-friendly processes and cost-efficient disruptive technologies, not related to the commonly debated Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). From the research and development perspectives, we link the properties of existing storage agents to their associated performances and we review all the potential materials to achieve high volumetric and gravimetric CO2 loading. We analyze the CO2 storage performances of different solid-state materials and we put into perspective the importance of implementing CO2 storage media and carriers for different practical uses.