Critical review of existing nanomaterial adsorbents to capture carbon dioxide and methane

Abstract

Innovative gas capture technologies with the objective to mitigate CO and CH emissions are discussed in this review. Emphasis is given on the use of nanoparticles (NP) as sorbents of CO and CH, which are the two most important global warming gases. The existing NP sorption processes must overcome certain challenges before their implementation to the industrial scale. These are: i) the utilization of the concentrated gas stream generated by the capture and gas purification technologies, ii) the reduction of the effects of impurities on the operating system, iii) the scale up of the relevant materials, and iv) the retrofitting of technologies in existing facilities. Thus, an innovative design of adsorbents could possibly address those issues. Biogas purification and CH storage would become a new motivation for the development of new sorbent materials, such as nanomaterials. This review discusses the current state of the art on the use of novel nanomaterials as adsorbents for CO and CH. The review shows that materials based on porous supports that are modified with amine or metals are currently providing the most promising results. The FeO-graphene and the MOF-117 based NPs show the greatest CO sorption capacities, due to their high thermal stability and high porosity. Conclusively, one of the main challenges would be to decrease the cost of capture and to scale-up the technologies to minimize large-scale power plant CO emissions.

Liquid vs. Gas Phase CO2 Photoreduction Process: Which Is the Effect of the Reaction Medium?

“…Several strategies can be pursued to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and their effects [4][5][6]: though geologic or oceanic storage are already applied to this purpose [7][8][9], the transformation into valuable or highly-requested products is conceptually more favourable [10]. A very attractive strategy is the conversion of carbon dioxide into fuels, which might lead to a real circular economy, avoiding the use of net CO 2 -producing energy sources.…”

Gas storage

“…Carbon dioxide is a major compound in the gaseous effluent of many industrial processes, the fossil fuel power plants being the most important source (40% of the total CO2). In order to reduce its emission, the main issues include increasing the power plants efficiency, ,the change towards nuclear and renewable energies and the implementation of carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems (Alonso et al, 2017). CCS can be used as a promising strategy to reduce not only the power plants emissions but it can also be employed in many industrial sectors such as the petrochemical industry, iron and steel refineries and cement production.…”

The Current Role of Chemical Engineering in Solving Environmental Problems

“…All of these are welcome. CE is, by definition, a multidisciplinary approach to real problems (Alonso et al, 2017;Abo Markeb et al, 2019).…”