Curbing the greenhouse effect by carbon dioxide adsorption with zeolite 13X

The removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial emissions has become essential in the fight against climate change. In this study, we employed Zeolite 13X for the capture and recovery Of CO2 in a flow through system where the adsorbent was subjected to five adsorption-desorption cycles. The influent stream contained 1.5% CO2 at standard conditions. The adsorbent bed was 1 in. in length and 1 in. 3/8 in dia., and was packed with 10 g of the zeolite. Temperature swing adsorption (TSA) was employed as the regeneration method through heating to approximately 135 degrees C with helium as the purge gas. The adsorbent capacity at 90% saturation was found to decrease from 78 to 60g(CO2)/kg(Zeolite13X) after the fifth cycle. The CO2 capture ratio or the mass Of CO2 adsorbed to the total mass that entered the system decreased from 63% to only 61% after the fifth cycle. The CO2 recovery efficiency ranged from 82 to 93% during desorption, and the CO2 relative recovery, i.e., CO2 desorbed for the nth cycle to CO2 adsorbed for the first cycle, ranged from 88 to 68%. The service life of the adsorbent was determined to be equal to eleven cycles at a useful capacity of 40g(CO2)/kg(Zeolite13X center dot) (c) 2007 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 53: 3137-3143, 2007.