APPLICATIONS OF TECHNOLOGY:
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) removal from
- Power plant flue gas
- Methane during natural gas processing
- Gas purification processes
ADVANTAGES:
- Unprecedented high volumetric CO2 uptake for post-combustion capture
- Long term stability
- Regenerability
- Inexpensive compared with current capture technologies
ABSTRACT:
Berkeley Lab scientists Tae-Hyun Bae and Jeffrey Long have found that cation-exchanged zeolites are outstanding materials for post-combustion carbon dioxide (CO2) capture. Especially, Ca-exchanged zeolite LTA (Ca-A) shows greater volumetric CO2 capture capacity than Mg-MOF-74, one of the best solid adsorbents reported. Ca-A also demonstrates greater selectivity of CO2 over N2 (250) for coal flue gas than Mg-MOF-74, ensuring higher purity of CO2 in the treated gas. It is also less costly than current CO2 capture technologies, highly stable, and it can be synthesized at large scale using inexpensive sources.
Ca-A’s precursor, Zeolite LTA, is a robust microporous solid that is widely used in many industrial separation processes as well as catalytic chemical reactions. As a result, stability and regenerability are already well established for Zeolite Ca-A. Owing to its successful applications in many large-scale processes, Ca-A may be applied to post-combustion CO2 capture more easily than MOFs, which have yet to be used in large-scale commercial applications.
Current CO2 removal technology using absorption-based separation via aqueous alkanolamine solutions requires a high level of thermal energy to regenerate the media after CO2 uptake — up to 30% of the power plant’s output. Thus, the development of a CO2 capture system based on solid adsorbents is particularly promising due to their significantly lower heat capacity compared with aqueous solutions, which is expected to reduce the amount of energy required for regeneration.
DEVELOPMENT STAGE: Bench scale prototype.
STATUS: Patent pending. Available for licensing or collaborative research.
SEE THESE OTHER BERKELEY LAB TECHNOLOGIES IN THIS FIELD:
Carbon Dioxide Capture at a Reduced Cost, IB-2614
REFERENCE NUMBER: IB-3290
