2008 Spring Symposium

 
Chun­shan Song
Direc­tor, EMS Ener­gy Insti­tute and Pro­fes­sor of Fuel Sci­ence
Depart­ment of Ener­gy and Min­er­al Engi­neer­ing
The Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty
209 Aca­d­e­m­ic Projects Build­ing
Uni­ver­si­ty Park, PA 16802, USA
Tel: 814–863-4466
csong@​psu.​edu

Abstract — This lec­ture will begin with an overview of ener­gy-relat­ed cap­ture, sequestration,conversion, and uti­liza­tion of car­bon diox­ide (CO₂) [C.S. Song, Catal. Today, 115 (2006)2–32]. Car­bon cap­ture and seques­tra­tion (CCS) is con­sid­ered as one of the key options for mit­i­gat­ing the emis­sions of CO₂ from ener­gy sys­tems. Accord­ing to stud­ies by U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy, CO₂ cap­ture by cur­rent com­mer­cial tech­nol­o­gy using aque­ous solu­tions of liq­uid alka­nolamines is ener­gy inten­sive and con­tributes to as much as two thirds of the total cost for CO₂ seques­tra­tion. We have pro­posed a new design con­cept of “mol­e­c­u­lar bas­ket sor­bent (MBS)” as a nov­el approach to CO₂ cap­ture and sep­a­ra­tion using selec­tive sol­id sor­bent [X. Xu et al., Micro­p­or. Meso­por. Materi., 62 (2003) 29–45]. CO₂ “mol­e­c­u­lar bas­ket” is nano-porous, CO₂-selec­tive high-capac­i­ty sor­bent for adsorp­tion sep­a­ra­tion of CO₂ from var­i­ous gas mix­tures.

We have explored a num­ber of new MBS for­mu­la­tions. An exam­ple of the MBS-CO₂ is a nano-porous com­pos­ite of poly­eth­yl­eneimine and a meso­porous moec­u­lar sieve MCM-41. PEI-MCM-41 type sor­bents have been found to be effec­tive for remov­ing CO₂ from flue gas and oth­er gas streams with high capac­i­ty and selec­tiv­i­ty at 20–100 °C under atmos­pher­ic pres­sure. The CO₂ adsorp­tion capac­i­ty and CO₂ sep­a­ra­tion selec­tiv­i­ty of MCM-41 were great­ly improved by load­ing PEI into its nano-sized pore chan­nels (about 3 nm), which made the result­ing sor­bent oper­at­ing like a “mol­e­c­u­lar bas­ket” for CO₂ (MBS-CO₂). The influ­ence of mois­ture con­cen­tra­tions in the sim­u­lat­ed flue gas on the CO₂ adsorp­tion sep­a­ra­tion per­for­mance was also exam­ined. CO₂ adsorp­tion capac­i­ty of the MCM-41-PEI adsor­bent for the sim­u­lat­ed moist flue gas was high­er than that for the sim­u­lat­ed dry flue gas. The cap­tured CO₂ can be eas­i­ly and com­plete­ly recov­ered by using a purge gas or a vac­u­um sys­tem at 75–100 °C. The mul­ti-cycle exper­i­ments have shown that the MBS-CO₂sor­bents have very good regen­er­a­bil­i­ty and sta­bil­i­ty [C. S. Song et al., Stud. Surf, Sci.Catal., 153 (2004) 411–416]. With the MBS, CO₂ cap­ture from flue gas can be con­duct­ed in a sol­vent-free and com­pact sol­id sor­bent sys­tem more ener­gy effi­cient­ly, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly. The MBS-CO₂ con­cept has also been found applic­a­ble to cap­ture and sep­a­ra­tion of hydro­gen sul­fide H₂S in gas mix­tures [X.Wang et al., Green Chem­istry, 9 (2007) 695–702]. Results of ana­lyt­i­cal char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of MBS will also bedis­cussed to shed light on why and how these nov­el sor­bents work under real­is­tic con­di­tions.

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Dr. Chun­shan Song is a Pro­fes­sor of Fuel Sci­ence and the Direc­tor of the EMS Ener­gy Insti­tute at the Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty. His research inter­ests include catal­y­sis and adsorp­tion for fuel pro­cess­ing, adsorp­tion desul­fu­r­iza­tion of fuels and reform­ing of hydro­car­bons and bio­fu­els for fuel cells, shape-selec­tive catal­y­sis for chem­i­cals, CO₂ cap­ture and uti­liza­tion, heavy oil upgrad­ing, and con­ver­sion of coal and bio­mass to liq­uid fuels and chem­i­cals.