Carbon (IV) Oxide (CO2 ) Capture Using Amine-Functionalized Coconut Shell-Based Activated Carbon as Adsorbent

Global Warming has become one of the most important environmental problems in the 21st century and the rise in CO2 emission is considered as the main cause for the global warming. The emissions of this carbon dioxide (CO2) from burn fossil fuels are the major reason for the increase in the concentration of this gas in the atmosphere. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is currently increasing globally by around 6 billion tons per year which must be reduced to prevent global warming and the adsorbents available for the removal of this harmful substance is quite expensive. Activated carbon produced from coconut shell that can be readily available at an inexpensive rate was used for this purpose. The adsorption of carbon dioxide (CO2) on activated carbon (AC) prepared from coconut shell has been investigated by using adsorption apparatus. The adsorption equilibrium and breakthrough curves were determined at different time of 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 minutes in order to investigate the adsorption capacities of the activated carbon at different dosage of activated carbon and flow rates of CO2 Maximum CO2 sorption capacity on activated carbon occurred at 50th and 60th minutes with the uptake values of 27.4, 63.0 and 105.0mg for 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5g respectively of activated carbon quantity measured which was subjected to the respective flow rates of 1L/min, 2L/min and 3L/min. Different characterization methods were carried out and applied and on the basis of CO2 adsorption, FTIR investigation was employed to the different functional groups of the adsorbents present in the analysis as different peaks were clearly indicated and interpreted after adsorption.BET and SEM were also applied to investigate the surface area of the adsorbent and observe the surface physical morphology of the adsorbent respectively before and after the adsorptions. The rate of adsorption of the adsorbent was determined through the weight differential measurement at different flow rate. The performance of the adsorbent was evaluated using a cylindrical adsorption column and analytical weighing balance. The adsorption was carried out at ambient (room) temperature of 25o C.The results obtained in this study conclude that activated carbon prepared from coconut shell can be considered as adequate adsorbent to separate carbon dioxide from flue gases and serves as a benchmark while searching for inexpensive and superior activated carbon production in future studies.

Keywords: Activated Carbon, Adsorbent, Amine-Functionalized, Carbon (IV) Oxide (CO2), Coconut Shell.