Recent advances in solid sorbents for CO2 capture and new development trends

Carbon dioxide (CO2) capture using solid sorbents has been recognized as a very promising technology that has attracted intense attention from both academic and industrial fields in the last decade. It is astonishing that around 2000 papers have been published from 2011 to 2014 alone, which is less than three years after our first review paper in this journal on solid CO2 sorbents was published. In this short period, much progress has been made and the major research focus has more or less changed. Therefore, we feel that it is necessary to give a timely update on solid CO2 capture materials, although we still have to keep some important literature results published in the past years so as to keep the good continuity. We believe this work will benefit researchers working in both academic and industrial areas. In this paper, we still organize the CO2 sorbents according to their working temperatures by classifying them as such: (1) low-temperature (<200 degrees C), (2) intermediate-temperature (200-400 degrees C), and (3) high-temperature (>400 degrees C). Since the sorption capacity, kinetics, recycling stability and cost are important parameters when evaluating a sorbent, these features will be carefully considered and discussed. In addition, due to the huge amounts of cost-effective CO2 sorbents demanded and the importance of waste resources, solid CO2 sorbents prepared from waste resources and their performance are reviewed. Finally, the techno-economic assessments of various CO2 sorbents and technologies in real applications are briefly discussed.