Binderless zeolite LTA beads with hierarchical porosity for selective CO2 adsorption in biogas upgrading
Dina G. Boer, Jort Langerak, Benny Bakker, Paolo P. Pescarmona
Abstract
In the context of CO2 removal from biogas, a series of binderless zeolite LTA adsorbents with a macroscopic bead format (0.5–1.0 mm) and with hierarchical porosity (i.e. with the zeolitic micropores being accessible through meso- and macropores mainly in the 10–100 nm range) was synthesized with a variety of Si/Al ratios (1.2–3.9) using Amberlite IRA-900 anion-exchange resin beads as a hard template. The CO2 and CH4 adsorption capacity of the beads in Na-form with different Si/Al ratios were measured, reaching higher CO2/CH4 selectivity and similar, yet slightly higher CO2 adsorption compared to commercial zeolite LTA pellets containing a binder. Subsequently, one the zeolitic beads was subjected to different degrees of ion-exchange (0–96%) with KCl and then tested in the adsorption of CO2 and CH4. The best performance among all the ion-exchanged beads was achieved with Na58K42-LTA beads, which gave very high CO2/CH4 selectivity (1540). Although essentially no CH4 was adsorbed on these beads, the CO2 adsorption capacity was still substantial (1.9 mmol g−1 at 0.4 bar CO2, i.e. the partial pressure of CO2 in biogas).