Critical Review on Carbon-Based Nanomaterial for Carbon Capture: Technical Challenges, Opportunities, and Future Perspectives

Abstract

In the 21st century, climate change and global warming are considered to be one of the world’s most severe and biggest environmental threats to humans. Consequently, the CO2 capture and storage technique has been a concern as a superior technique by both industrial and academic research communities, which prohibits the mixing of CO2 from point sources, such as cement plants and fossil fuel power plants, into the atmosphere. Particularly, after the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2015, which was held in Paris, France, researchers have been vigorously focusing on the reduction of greenhouse gases. Presently, liquid amine scrubbing has been used for CO2 capture technology, while solid sorbents are used for CO2 capture technology to overcome the drawbacks associated with amine scrubbing technology. In this review, different carbon nanomaterials, such as fullerene, carbon nanotubes, graphene oxide, biochar, and activated carbon, and their derivatives for CO2 capture applications are summarized. In addition, the review covers the fundamental requirements of solid sorbents, advantages and disadvantages of other solid sorbents, and policies proposed for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by developing and developed countries, which will be highly beneficial for making future policies and fabricating low-cost CO2 sorbents. Finally, the current technical challenges and opportunities for the development of efficient and practically possible carbon-based CO2 sorbents were discussed. Furthermore, future perspectives were proposed for the development of carbonaceous porous materials in place of existing liquid amine scrubbing technology in the future.