Measurement of CO2 Absorption in a 4 M Aqueous Solution of 3-Amino-1-Propanol for CO2 Removal

Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission into the atmosphere causes environmental concern. The main sources of CO₂ come from industries such as power generation. The current technology to remove CO₂ effectively is carbon capture and storage or CCS especially absorption with aqueous amine solutions. The commonly used amine solutions are monoethanolamine (MEA) and methyldiethanolamine (MDEA). They have some disadvantages like low capacity and high energy consumption. A new solvent such as 3-amino-1-propanol (AP) has been designed to be used as an alternative solvent for CO₂ removal. This solvent should provide the absorption and cyclic capacities close or higher than the commercial ones. The objective of this research is to measure the CO₂ absorption in a 4 M aqueous solution of AP at the temperature from 303.15 K to 353.15 K and CO₂ partial pressures ranging from 5 to 100 kPa and the absorption results of CO₂ in AP solution are compared with that of aqueous solution of MEA. From the experiment, the results present that AP at 4 M provides the performance relatively close to that of MEA. The cyclic capacities of AP are relatively lower than that of MEA for 26.83 and 2.73 % for CO₂ partial pressure at 15 and 100 kPa. The absorption capacity of AP is higher when CO₂ partial pressure increases and reduces as temperature increases. AP can be considered as an alternative solvent for CO₂ removal at high CO₂ partial pressure. Other properties like kinetics, mass transfer, energy penalty for solvent regeneration as well as other criteria have to be investigated for AP before it can be used for commercial purposes.