Screening and Characterization of Ternary Oxides for High-Temperature Carbon Capture

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is increasingly being accepted as a necessary component of any effort to mitigate the impact of anthropogenic climate change, as it is both a relatively mature and easily implemented technology. High-temperature CO2 absorption looping is a promising process that offers a much lower energy penalty than the current state of the art amine scrubbing techniques, but more effective materials are required for widespread implementation. This work describes the experimental characterization and CO2 absorption properties of several new ternary transition metal oxides predicted by high-throughput DFT screening. One material reported here, Li5SbO5, displays reversible CO2 sorption, and maintains similar to 72% of its theoretical capacity out to 25 cycles. The results in this work are used to discuss major influences on CO2 absorption capacity and rate, including the role of the crystal structure, the transition metal, the alkali or alkaline earth metal, and the competing roles of thermodynamics and kinetics. Notably, this work shows the extent and rate to which ternary metal oxides carbonate are driven primarily by the identity of the alkali or alkaline earth ion and the nature of the crystal structure, whereas the identity of the transition ion carries little influence in the systems studied here.