COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CO2 CAPTURE USING ZEOLITE (ZSM-5) AND ACTIVATED CARBON FROM SUGARCANE BAGASSE

Abstract

The increasing energy demand can be meet globally with the use of non-renewable fossil fuels, however the use of these fossil fuels is associated with tremendous release of CO2, which largely contributed to greenhouse gases effect (GHG’s). Climate change or globally warning is one of the result of GHG’s effect, to prevent global warming or climate change, the excess amount of CO2 in the atmosphere must be reduced to its bearable minimum, hence the need for carbon capture and storage techniques (CCS). CCS uses different solid adsorbents to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere which could be stored in aquifer or buried under the soil. In this work zeolite and activated carbon from sugarcane bagasse were used as an adsorbent for CO2 adsorption from the atmosphere. The adsorption capacity of the adsorbents were determined and the result revealed that the amount of CO2 adsorbed using activated carbon (65 mg/g) was higher than that of the zeolite (50 mg/g), however for both adsorbents, the adsorption capacity were higher than that of the commercial adsorbents when compared. The adsorption isotherm and kinetic models employed in this study revealed that the correlation coefficient, R2 values of 0.9859 and 0.9691 respectively are close to unity, this closeness to unity indicates a favorable adsorption process. Increase in temperature from 25OC to 100OC was observed with a decrease in adsorption capacities of the adsorbents, whereas increasing the adsorbent dosage from 0.5g to 1.5g shows appreciable increase in the adsorption capacities of zeolite and activated carbon. The BET analysis on the adsorbents revealed the surface areas of 224.2m2/g and 388.3m2/g for activated carbon and zeolite respectively. The activation energy Ea of 15.3KJ/mol and 13.5KJ/mol for activated carbon and zeolite obeys physiosorption.