Curbing the greenhouse effect by carbon dioxide adsorption with Zeolite 13X

The removal of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from industrial emissions has become essential in the fight against climate change. In this study, we employed Zeolite 13X for the capture and recovery of CO 2 in a flow through system where the adsorbent was subjected to five adsorption‐desorption cycles. The influent stream contained 1.5% CO 2 at standard conditions. The adsorbent bed was 1 in. in length and 1 in. 3/8 in dia., and was packed with 10 g of the zeolite. Temperature swing adsorption (TSA) was employed as the regeneration method through heating to approximately 135 °C with helium as the purge gas. The adsorbent capacity at 90% saturation was found to decrease from 78 to 60g CO2 /kg Zeolite13X after the fifth cycle. The CO 2 capture ratio or the mass of CO 2 adsorbed to the total mass that entered the system decreased from 63% to only 61% after the fifth cycle. The CO 2 recovery efficiency ranged from 82 to 93% during desorption, and the CO 2 relative recovery, i.e., CO 2 desorbed for the n th cycle to CO 2 adsorbed for the first cycle, ranged from 88 to 68%. The service life of the adsorbent was determined to be equal to eleven cycles at a useful capacity of 40g CO2 /kg Zeolite13X . © 2007 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2007