Characteristics and carbon dioxide adsorption performance of amine-impregnated KCC-1 with different loading ratio

With our climate condition worsening day by day, the effort to mitigate this effect has been intensified. One of the ways to curb this issue is by reducing the release of carbon dioxide (CO₂) to the atmosphere via CO₂ capture. Among all the material used for CO₂ capture, amine-impregnated porous silica was observed to be a promising adsorbent. Research has shown its potential, but the accessibility issues caused by its narrow pore opening limits its capabilities. KCC-1, the latest member of the porous silica family, possesses unique fibrous morphology that can solve this problem. In this paper, a series of Tetraethylenepentamine (TEPA)-impregnated KCC-1 (KCC-1/TEPA) synthesized at three different loading ratios (KCC-1 to TEPA 2:1, 1:1 and 1:2) is reported. Characteristics study was conducted to determine the effect of loading ratio on its properties, and its CO₂ adsorption capacity was evaluated. FTIR peaks at 3430 cm⁻¹, 3300 cm⁻¹, 2950 cm⁻¹, 2841 cm⁻¹, 1658 cm⁻¹, 1565 cm⁻¹ and 1465 cm⁻¹ revealed that the impregnation was successful, while XRD diffractogram indicated that KCC-1 structure remained preserved in all impregnated samples. Increased surface area and pore volume reduction was observed with the increase of TEPA-loading ratio. KCC-1/T1:2 reported the highest CO₂ adsorption value among all three impregnated sample with 141 mg/g, while KCC-1/T2:1 recorded the lowest (82 mg/g). Results indicated that increasing TEPA loading ratio increases the number of active sites for CO₂ to attached, hence lead to increase CO₂ capture. Overall, it was shown that amount of CO₂ adsorbed is related to the amount of TEPA loaded to the sorbent.