Na₂CO₃-Based Sorbents Coated on Metal Foil: Post Testing Analysis

Abstract

Worldwide increase in energy demand coupled with a continued reliance on fossil fuel resources have contributed to a significant increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA’s) World Energy Outlook 2010 main scenario, the projected growth in energy demand will translate into a 21 % rise in energy related CO₂ emissions between 2008 and 2035, mostly due to robust economic growth in developing countries. This quantity of greenhouse gas emissions would make it next to impossible to meet a 2 ºC goal thought to avoid the worst consequences of global climate change without additional actions. Scenarios for stabilizing climate-forcing emissions suggest atmospheric CO₂ stabilization can only be accomplished through the development and deployment of a robust portfolio of solutions, of which carbon capture and sequestration represent one component. In previous work [1], Na₂CO₃/Al₂O₃ distributed on metal foil was shown to be effective for CO₂ capture. In the current work, Na₂CO₃/Al₂O₃ prepared in the powder-form and foil-form were tested in a fixed-bed reactor and characterized by X-ray diffraction, BET surface area, Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy, before and after testing, to better understand the performance of the sorbents. The powder sorbents exhibited higher performance, in general, but one of the foil samples showed the highest performance out of all the power and foil sorbents. The same sorbent was also tested for 500 cycles to understand the long-term stability.