Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Capture in Alkanolamines Impregnated Activated Carbon Developed from Date Stones

Abstract

The concern to reduce global carbon emissions has significantly improved the development of efficient solid sorbents such as activated carbon (AC). In this study, AC is developed from date stones which is one of the abundantly found agricultural waste material in gulf region. The AC was completely characterized in terms of pore volume, surface area, stability test, volatile carbon and fixed carbon contents. Impregnation of AC was performed by three different alkanolamines, namely Diethylene triamine (DETA), Pentaethylene hexamine (PEHA) and Di-ethanol amine (DEA). The alkanolamine impregnated sorbents were utilized for CO2adsorption at temperatures of 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and 100 °C and carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations of 10, 30, 50, 70 and 92% in helium. The adsorption phenomenon was evaluated by Langmuir isotherms for all the studied adsorbents. The AC developed from date stones provided high adsorption loading capacity of CO2 i.e., 89.79 mg/g of AC at 25 °C. Thermodynamic parameters showed that the adsorption was endothermic and spontaneous in nature. Moreover, desorption profiles reveal that DETA-AC samples provided most favorable characteristics with respect to the value of desorption constant.