Post-combustion CO2 capture and separation in flue gas based on hydrate technology:A review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2021.111806Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Hydrate-based CO2 capture and separation was investigated.

  • The effects and mechanisms of chemical additives on CO2 separation were summarized.

  • Lower heat generation and stable thermodynamic additives are urgently needed.

  • Nanoparticles promote hydrate formation by enhancing thermal conductivity and mass transfer.

  • The mechanism of gas separation enhanced by mixed additives need further exploration.

Abstract

Hydrate-based CO2 separation technology is limited by complex formation conditions and low separation efficiency, makes it temporarily unable to realize commercial application. In this review, according to the superiority of additives in strengthening hydrate formation, the effects of different additives on the thermodynamics-kinetics of hydrate formation were systematically summarized, and the strengthening mechanism was further elaborated from the perspectives of hydrate structure change and gas selectivity. Among them, quaternary ammonium salt is more environmentally friendly, and the separation factor reached 37 with TBAF, more than 90 mol% CO2 captured by the two-stage hydrate + membrane separation method. In addition, based on the characteristics of nanoparticles in enhancing heat and mass transfer, the impact of nanoparticles on the formation of CO2 hydrate was summarized, which provided a new idea for the research of additives. More importantly, the effects of experimental conditions and process flow on separation efficiency were also summarized. Energy analysis showed that the use of thermodynamic additives significantly reduced the investment cost of the system by more than 50%. However, higher hydrate formation heat leads to higher energy consumption, and the presence of kinetic additives improves significantly, emphasizing the urgency of developing more stable and lower formation heat thermodynamic additives and exploring the effect of mixed additives on commercial applications. At present, stirring methods were mostly used to strengthen hydrate formation with higher energy consumption. Future research should also strive to carry out experimental measurements under static conditions, and constantly optimize the reaction vessel and process.

Introduction

Due to the widespread use of fossil fuels in the world, the CO2 content in the atmosphere is sharply increasing and global warming is posing a serious threat to the global environment [1,2]. Power plants are the key contributors to CO2 emissions, accounting for approximately 41% of the global CO2 release, which is increasing on an annual basis [3]. The gas products after complete combustion in the power plant contain approximately 20% of CO2 and 5% of O2, less than 1% of H2S, a large amount of water vapor, and the rest are mainly N2 [4]. How to effectively separate CO2 from flue gas and store it is a global concern. Traditional methods of CO2 capture and separation include membrane separation, chemical adsorption, and physical adsorption [[5], [6], [7][5], [6], [7][5], [6], [7]]. Studies have also proposed that the above methods results in serious pollution, high cost, low efficiency and a series of problems [8]. Therefore, a method of converting CO2 to hydrates was proposed [[9], [10], [11], [12][9], [10], [11], [12][9], [10], [11], [12]].

Gas hydrate is an ice-like crystalline substance formed by natural gas and water under high pressure and low temperature [13,14]. Gas hydrate has three host structures, including cubic structure I (sI), cubic structure II (sII), and cubic structure H (sH) [15]. The crystal structure parameters of these three types of gas hydrate are shown in Table 1. When the flue gas is converted to hydrate, CO2 easily forms sI hydrate [16,17] at low pressures and 273 K, while N2 produces sII hydrate at the same temperature and a pressure of 15.9 MPa [18,19]. Special attention should be paid to the fact that the hydrate formation conditions of N2 and O2 in flue gas are similar [4], and the content of H2S gas is low. When studying the hydrate method to capture and separate CO2 in flue gas, the binary mixture gas with 20 mol% CO2 and 80 mol% N2 is mostly used to simulate flue gas, which is different from the real flue gas composition. As shown in Fig. 1, due to the differences in phase equilibria between CO2 and N2, CO2 preferentially generates CO2 hydrate. This is also the theoretical basis for separating CO2 from flue gas using hydrate technology. However, the formation process of hydrate is a complex phase transition process and requires low temperature and high pressure conditions [20] accompanied by gas-liquid mass transfer and heat transfer [21], thus restricting the development of CO2 capture and separation technology in flue gas by the hydrate method to a certain extent. At present, CO2 capture by the hydrate method is mainly faced with the challenges of harsh conditions, low rates, poor CO2 recovery and low gas consumption.

To date, many different methods have been used to promote the formation of gas hydrates, such as stirring [23], spraying [24], injecting gas as bubbles [25], and applying ultrasonic waves [26]. In addition, adding thermodynamic accelerators such as tetrahydrofuran (THF) [[27], [28], [29]], tetra-n-butylammonium bromide (TBAB) [8,[30], [31], [32]], cyclopentane (CP) [10], and sulfonated lignin [33] to the reaction system can reduce the temperature and pressure required for CO2 hydrate formation and accelerate the formation process. Studies have also found that the presence of surfactants, such as sodium dodecyl sulfonate (SDS) [[34], [35], [36]], can effectively improve the mass transfer between the gas and liquid phases and promote gas dissolution. Other researchers have used biosurfactants [[37], [38], [39]] to promote the formation of hydrates. In addition, nanofluids, which allow for high heat and mass transfer, were proposed at the end of the 20th century and considered to be a suitable additive for hydrate formation [40]. In 2006, Li et al. [41] proved that copper nanofluids can promote the formation of HFC134a hydrate. This was the first time that nanofluids were shown to promote the formation of hydrate. In subsequent studies, an increasing number of nanofluids and mixed fluids of nanomaterials with surface additives were found to play an important role in promoting hydrate formation [[42], [43], [44], [45], [46], [47], [48], [49], [50][42], [43], [44], [45], [46], [47], [48], [49], [50][42], [43], [44], [45], [46], [47], [48], [49], [50]]. However, although a large number of additives have been applied to the separation of CO2 and N2 in the flue gas, the mechanism of action of the different additives remained unclear and there was no unified understanding of an optimal additive.

In a previous review [51], the characteristics of hydrates with different thermodynamic additives were summarized in detail, and the efficiency of capturing and separating CO2 from flue gas was also summarized. However, the effect of different additives on the mechanism of action of CO2 separation was not explained, and there was no unified conclusion regarding the application of additives. In addition, the impact of different industrial processes on CO2 capture and separation for commercial application of this technology was not mentioned. Therefore, in this review, we compared the effects of different chemical additives on CO2/N2 separation by summarizing the existing research results and obtain the current optimal additive types. In addition, we also analyze the mechanism of action of different additives. Furthermore, regarding the application of CO2 capture and separation technology based on hydrate technology, we also summarize the influence of pressure, temperature, inlet flow rate and other technological processes on the capture effect. Finally, we propose unique suggestions addressing the limitations of the current technology.

Section snippets

Experimental parameters

The hydrate induction time refers to the time required for the hydrate formation, which includes an exothermic event leading to a brief temperature increase of the system in the process of the experiment; the formation of hydrate crystals can also accelerate the gas consumption, resulting in a sudden decrease in the system pressure, which causes the commonly used temperature to suddenly increase and the pressure to decrease during the induction time of hydrate formation.

The total gas

The effect of chemical additives on CO2 hydrate formation

In the process of CO2 hydrate formation, the presence of chemical additives can effectively improve the temperature and pressure conditions required for hydrate formation, increase the consumption of CO2 and shorten the induction time of hydrate formation. Common chemical additives include thermodynamic and kinetic additives. Many researchers have studied their effects on the formation of CO2 hydrate. This section summarizes the previous research results and elaborates the mechanism of the

Limitations and development

The capture and separation of CO2 in flue gas based on the hydrate method has been proven effective. The experimental results showed that chemical additives could improve the effectiveness of CO2 capture and separation by changing the phase equilibrium condition of the hydrate, reducing the surface tension of the solution, and accelerating the dissolution of CO2. However, experimental studies mainly focused on the changes in the hydrate formation conditions caused by thermodynamic additives. At

Conclusion

This review summarizes the effects of different chemical additives on CO2 capture and separation in flue gas by hydrate method. It systematically analyzes the mechanism of all the additives involved in accelerating CO2 capture. Thermodynamic additives can broaden the stable region of hydrate formation and be affected by its concentration. Among them, the single TBAF has the most substantial separation effect on CO2, and the separation factor reached by 37, which is more environmentally friendly

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work is financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFC0312304), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.52176057, 51976023, 52076032), Dalian Leading Academic & Key Plan Project (Grant No. 2020JJ25CY010), the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (Grant No. 2019-MS-061), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. DUT20RC(5)003).

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