Steam-Stripping for Regeneration of Supported Amine-Based CO2 Adsorbents

Abstract

Amine-based solid CO₂ adsorbents have been investigated intensively in recent years. However, the focus has routinely been on their adsorption capacity and not on their regeneration. Here, a practical desorption process for supported amine adsorbents, steam-stripping, is demonstrated for the first time.

The world continues to rely heavily on energy supplied by fossil fuels, and the forecast for future energy supply and demand does not indicate that fossil fuel use will diminish substantially in the coming years. The use of these energy resources releases huge amounts of CO₂ into the atmosphere every year and there is increased pressure throughout the world to limit these releases as a consequence of the impact of CO₂ on global climate change. A primary method to limit the release of CO₂ is to trap it at its release point (carbon capture) for storage via one of several potential storage technologies (sequestration).1 A key roadblock is the development of cost-effective CO₂ capture/separation technologies, because these represent the majority of the costs in oceanic or geologic sequestration scenarios.2 In capturing CO₂ for beneficial uses, such as feeding algae farms for biofuel production, the capture costs represent the entire cost of the CO₂ supply.