Mesoporous magnesium oxide nanoparticles derived via complexation-combustion for enhanced performance in carbon dioxide capture

Abstract Magnesium oxide (MgO) is a promising candidate for carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) capture at high temperature applicable to pre-combustion capture in an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) scheme. In this work, mesoporous MgO nanoparticles were synthesized via simple complexation-combustion method by using glycine (G) and urea (U) as fuels (F). The obtained sorbents were thoroughly characterized in terms of the crystalline structure, morphology, nature of the fuel, F/O ratio, and their consequent effects on CO 2 sorption. It was observed that due to the complexation followed by combustion in the presence of glycine, MgO with crystallite size as small as ∼8 nm could be derived. The synthesized MgO nanoparticles exhibited exceptionally high CO 2 sorption at elevated temperatures. Furthermore, CO 2 sorption isotherms in assistance with FT-IR and DSC experiments demonstrated that the low CO 2 uptake at ambient temperature (25–100 °C) may be due to the formation of monodentate carbonates, whereas predominant bicarbonates enhance the CO 2 uptake at elevated temperatures (100–300 °C). MgO-1.5(G) obtained the highest sorption corresponding to 1.34 mmol/g at 200 °C.