The Development of Amine-Based Potential Kenaf Sorbent for Carbon Dioxide (CO₂) Capture

Abstract

Adsorption process becomes a promising, cost-effective and efficient separation technique for CO₂ capture. Inspired by the commercialized technique for capturing and sequestering CO₂, the development of solid amine sorbents relies on support material has become a great interest amongst researchers worldwide. Based on this new invention, a research on kenaf as cost-potential agricultural source was conducted to study the adsorptive performance towards carbon dioxide (CO₂). The research work was initiated by impregnating a series of amine groups such as MEA, DEA and MDEA on kenaf via wet impregnation method. The CO₂ adsorption study was carried out by flowing 300 cm³/min of purified CO₂ to the PSA column and compressed up to 1.5 bar. Result obtained indicates that MEA has achieved the highest amount of CO₂ adsorbed amongst the other types of amines. Therefore, MEA was selected for further study by varying the ratio of kenaf to MEA as 1:0.5, 1:0.7, 1:1, 1:2, 1:5, 1:7 and 1:10. It is shown that the ratio of kenaf to MEA of 1:1 have recorded the highest amount of CO₂ capture capacity (2.07 mmol CO₂/g sorbent) as compared to 1:0.5, 1:0.7, 1:2, 1:5, 1:7 and 1:10 with 0.78, 1.71, 1.77, 1.20, 0.96 and 0.89 mmol CO₂/g sorbent, respectively. This study inferred that the introduction of MEA has enhanced the adsorptive capability of kenaf towards CO₂.