Synthesis and carbonation of mesoporous magnesium oxide

Greenhouse gas emissions, in particular carbon dioxide, are considered as the main causes of the global warming. So, capture and storage of C0 2 coming from industrial installation are major environmental objectives. One way of C0 2 separation and capture is to use carbonation/decarbonation cycles on various capture masses. Among numerous candidates, magnesium oxide presents the advantage to form a thermodynamically stable carbonate, to be regenerable by simple heating, and to be available in large quantifies and at low-cost. If magnesium oxide has been largely studied for applications in catalysis, its use as C0 2 capture mass remains misunderstood. Thus the reaction of MgO carbonation made the object of few studies, and the main ones deal with utilization at high temperatures (300-350°C) and high C0 2 pressures (10-20 bar). In this work, we are interested in both the synthesis of magnesium oxide with high specific surface area, and its carbonation properties at atmospheric pressure. The way of synthesis of a mesoporous magnesium oxide is described, as well as the physico¬chemical characterizations of such an oxide. The reaction of carbonation is followed by means of thermogravimetric experiments. The influences of temperature, C0 2 partial pressure and water vapor partial pressure are investigated. These results are completed by the characterizations of texture and morphological properties of the solid and their change during the reaction.