Reviewing and screening ionic liquids and deep eutectic solvents for effective CO2 capture

CO2 capture is essential for both mitigating CO2 emissions and purifying/conditioning gases for fuel and chemical production. To further improve the process performance with low environmental impacts, different strategies have been proposed, where developing liquid green absorbent for capturing CO2 is one of the effective options. Ionic liquids (IL)/deep eutectic solvents (DES) have recently emerged as green absorbents with unique properties, especially DESs also benefit from facile synthesis, low toxicity, and high biodegradability. To promote their development, this work summarized the recent research progress on ILs/DESs developed for CO2 capture from the aspects of those physical- and chemical-based, and COSMO-RS was combined to predict the properties that are unavailable from published articles in order to evaluate their performance based on the key properties for different IL/DES-based technologies. Finally, top 10 ILs/DESs were listed based on the corresponding criteria. The shared information will provide insight into screening and further developing IL/DES-based technologies for CO2 capture.

Automated summary

CO2 capture is crucial for reducing emissions and purifying gases. Using liquid green absorbents, such as ionic liquids (IL) and deep eutectic solvents (DES), has been proposed as an effective option. This research reviewed the recent progress in ILs/DESs for CO2 capture and predicted their properties using COSMO-RS, providing insight for developing IL/DES-based technologies. The top 10 ILs/DESs were also listed based on specific criteria.