Enhancing CO2 hydrate formation: Effect of coconut fibers on nucleation kinetics of CO2 hydrates

Abstract

Producing CO2 gas hydrates is one of the recent techniques being used to capture CO2. In this work, the effect of coconut fibers on kinetics CO2 hydrate formation has been investigated. Use of coconut fibers was found to reduce the induction time of CO2 hydrate formation drastically from 106.6 ± 9.5 mins when no coconut fibers were used, to 29.3 ± 9.9 mins when 9 wt% coconut fibers were used. A combination of coconut fibers and tetrahydrofuran was found to yield synergistic effect leading to a reduction in induction time almost by 20 times to 5.5 ± 5.1 mins, and the amount of CO2 captured was found to be 0.0645 ± 0.0071 moles of CO2 per mole of water. Coconut fibers provide an enhanced interfacial area to promote heterogeneous nucleation of CO2 hydrates resulting in a reduction of induction time. The results presented in this work can lead to the development of innovative technologies for the capture of CO2 using economical and biodegradable material.