Efficient CO2 capture on low-cost silica gel modified by polyethyleneimine

In this work,a series of polyethyleneimine(PEI) functionalized commercial silica gel were prepared by wet impregnation method and used as CO 2 sorbent.The as-prepared sorbents were characterized by N 2 adsorption,FT-IR and SEM techniques.CO 2 capture was tested in a fixed bed reactor using a simulated flue gas containing 15.1% CO 2 in a temperature range of 25-100 C.The effects of sorption temperature and amine content on CO 2 uptake of the adsorbents were investigated.The silica gel with a 30 wt% PEI loading manifested the largest CO 2 uptake of 93.4 mg CO 2 /g adsorbent(equal to 311.3 mg CO 2 /g PEI) among the tested sorbents under the conditions of 15.1%(v/v) CO 2 in N 2 at 75 C and atmospheric pressure.Moreover,it was rather low-cost.In addition,the PEI-impregnated silica gel exhibited stable adsorption-desorption behavior during 5 consecutive test cycles.These results suggest that the PEI-impregnated silica gel is a promising and cost-effective sorbent for CO 2 capture from flue gas and other stationary sources with low CO 2 concentration.