Investigation of Carbon dioxide Absorption Characteristics in Amino Acid activated Solutions

Power plants and sweetening of natural gas process are among the major sources of CO2 emissions from the industry. Conventional CO2 absorption processes using amine based chemicals suffer from solvent degradation, corrosion and solvent regeneration efficiency problems. These limitations can be overcome by employing the hybrid mixtures of two or more solvents to combine the desired solvent properties in one mixture. Amino acid salts have low volatility due to its ionic structure and can resist the oxy degradation of the solvent and consequently will have low losses and offer less energy to regenerate compared to conventional amines. Similarly potassium carbonate which has low degradation and low cost compared to amines. These two potential solvents can be used to develop novel absorption solvents (NAS) with improved properties to replace conventional amines. At the same time molecular simulations will be developed to complement the experimental data which will facilitate to identify the active sides of molecules taking part in effective CO2 uptake and hence to develop new solvents for efficient CO2 removal from various industrial processes.