Temperature-Induced Uptake of CO2 and Formation of Carbamates in Mesocaged Silica Modified with n-Propylamines

Adsorption-mediated CO2 separation can reduce the cost of carbon capture and storage. The reduction in cost requires adsorbents with high capacities for CO2 sorption and high CO2-over-N-2 selectivity. Amine-modified sorbents are promising candidates for carbon capture. To investigate the details of CO2 adsorption in such materials, we studied mesocaged (cubic, Pm (3) over barn symmetry) silica adsorbents with tethered propylamines using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy and volumetric uptake experiments. The degree of heterogeneity in these coatings was varied by either cosynthesizing or postsynthetically introducing the propylamine modification. In situ FTIR spectroscopy revealed the presence of both physisorbed and chemisorbed CO2 in the materials. We present direct molecular evidence for physisorption using FTIR spectroscopy in mesoporous silica sorbents modified with propylamines. Physisorption reduced the CO2-over-N-2 selectivity in amine-rich sorbents. Samples with homogeneous coatings showed typical CO2 adsorption trends and large quantities of IR-observable physisorbed CO2. The uptake of CO2 in mesocaged materials with heterogeneous propylamine coatings was higher at high temperatures than at low temperatures. At higher temperatures and low pressures, the postsynthetically modified materials adsorbed more CO2 than did the extracted ones, even though the surface area after modification was clearly reduced and the coverage of primary amine groups was lower. The principal mode of CO2 uptake in postsynthetically modified mesoporous silica was chemisorption. The chemisorbed moieties were present mainly as carbamate ammonium ion pairs, resulting from the quantitative transformation of primary amine groups during CO2 adsorption as established by NIR spectroscopy. The heterogeneity in the coatings promoted the formation of these ion pairs. The average propylamine propylamine distance must be small to allow the formation of carbamate-propylammonium ion pairs.