Facilely tuning the morphologies of tertiary amine-functionalized SBA-15 for optimizing selective SO2 capture

Abstract

The amine-based materials pose high potential for the adsorption of sulfur dioxide (SO2). This work is aimed at modulating the morphologies of SBA-15 adsorbents by controlling the precursor self-assembly processes, for the sake of optimizing the utilization efficiency of amine species in the polytertiary amine (PTA)-functionalized SBA-15. It results that worm-like SBA-15 (WLS) material shows a better particle aspect ratio and well-defined pore structure, which helps to optimize the adsorption sites invoked by the preferable dispersion and exposure of PTA, thus amplifying the chemisorption of SO2 on the adsorbent. Consequently, the functionalized WLS-PTA adsorbent exhibits remarkable SO2 adsorption performance (15.43 mmol/g), exceptionally high selectivities of SO2/N2 (27522) and SO2/CO2 (652). Surprisingly, the desulfurization capacity can be further enhanced by the positive effect of the water vapor co-fed. It is unveiled that the whole SO2 adsorption process mainly follows the dual site Langmuir-Freundlich isotherm model and Bangham model. This work sheds light on the design of polymer-solid composite adsorbents for selective capture of SO2.