Thermodynamic and Experimental Study of the Energetic Cost Involved in the Capture of Carbon Dioxide by Aqueous Mixtures of Commonly Used Primary and Tertiary Amines.

Abstract

The capture of carbon dioxide with chemical solvents is one solution to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from anthropogenic sources and thus tackle climate change. Recent research has been focused on optimizing new kinds of advanced absorbents including aqueous amine blends, but critical downsides such as the large energetic cost involved with the industrial process remain. To address this issue, a better understanding of the energetic interactions existing in solution is necessary. In this paper, we report direct experimental measurements of the energy cost involved in the solvation of CO2 in two aqueous amine blends at different temperatures. The chemical solvents were designed as aqueous mixtures of commonly used primary and tertiary amines to study the influence of the different chemical properties inferred by the amine class. We have also applied a thermodynamic model to represent the energetic effects that take place in solution during CO2 dissolution in these mixtures, where all parameters were taken from previous studies focused on single amine absorbents. The noteworthy agreement observed with the reported experimental heats of absorption and with literature vapor liquid equilibrium properties confirmed the relevance of the underlying molecular mechanisms considered in our model, and suggest that this model would prove useful to investigate CO2 dissolution in other amine blends.