Rapid and intensified screening of a carbon capture adsorbent using a 3D-printed swirling fluidised bed
R. Jamei, Jonathan McDonough, D.A. Reay, Vladimir Živković
Abstract
Carbon capture (CC) will play a predominant role in decarbonising the energy, industry, and transportation sectors in the short to medium timeframes to meet the 2050 Net Zero target. Adsorption is a promising CC technology that uses solid-adsorbents rather than liquid-absorbents to strip CO2 from flue gas streams. In this study we developed a small-scale platform for screening CO2 adsorbents that uses a 3D-printed toroidal fluidised bed (TORBED) reactor to intensify gas–solid mixing. Here we tested the performance of a commercial sorbent (based on branched polyethyleneimine, BPEI) for capturing CO2 from artificial flue gas streams comprised of different N2/CO2 mixtures. Breakthrough curves were subsequently collected for a variety of CO2 volume fractions (2–20 vol%), BPEI bed loads (1–2.5 g), gas flow rates (20–35 L/min), and temperatures (40–70 °C). A high sorbent capacity of 2.64 ± 0.06 mmol/g was observed in the TORBED in experiments lasting no more than 10 s. The rapid speed in which the data were collected represents the potential for high throughput screening. By monitoring the bed temperature during each experiment, we also inferred that the high heat transfer rates in the mini-TORBED minimises the heat of adsorption influence of the kinetics.