CO2 uptake performance and life cycle assessment of CaO-based sorbents prepared from waste oyster shells blended with PMMA nanosphere scaffolds

In this paper, we demonstrate a means of simultaneously solving two serious environmental issues by reutilization of calcinated mixture of pulverized waste oyster shells blending with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) nanospheres to prepare CaO-based sorbents for CO2 capture. After 10 cycles of isothermal carbonation/calcination at 750 degrees C, the greatest CO2 uptake (0.19g CO2/g sorbent) was that for the sorbent featuring 70 wt% of PMMA, which was almost three times higher than that (0.07g CO2/g sorbent) of untreated waste oyster shell. The greater CO2 uptake was likely a result of particle size reduction and afterwards surface basicity enhancement and an increase in the volume of mesopores and macropores. Following simplified life cycle assessment, whose all input values were collected from our experimental results, suggested that a significant CO2 emission reduction along with lesser human health and ecosystems impacts would be achieved immediately once waste is reutilized. Most importantly, the CO2 uptake efficiency must be greater than 20% or sorbents prepared from limestone mining would eventually produce a net positive CO2 emission. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.