Post-combustion CO 2 capture: On the potentiality of amino acid ionic liquid as modifying agent of mesoporous solids

Abstract In this paper, mesoporous γ-Al 2 O 3 was impregnated with [Emim][Gly] ionic liquid (IL) at different loadings (5, 9 and 16% wt). The obtained sorbents were tested for CO 2 capture under typical conditions of combustion flue-gas at temperatures varying in the range 303–373 K. N 2 porosimetric analysis on the samples, coupled with kinetic tests of CO 2 adsorption, revealed that a lower pore volume occurring at the highest IL loading ended up in a slower saturation process. The enhancement of CO 2 capture capacity of the raw sorbent was monotonic with the IL loading and the best results were achieved at 303 K. The chemisorption nature of the adsorption process for IL-containing sorbents was assessed by means of FT-IR analysis. Finally, preliminary tests of cyclic adsorption/desorption showed that nearly 80% of the original CO 2 capture capacity of sorbent was restored by steam desorption at 388 K.