Lab-scale pilot for CO2 capture vacuum pressure swing adsorption: MIL-160(Al) vs zeolite 13X

Abstract

Carbon capture is among the key technologies to quickly reduce anthropogenic CO₂ emissions to a net zero emission by 2050. Among the different separation technologies, adsorption is one of the most promising. Several Vacuum and/or Pressure Swing Adsorption cycles have been developed and tested for CO₂ capture using mainly zeolite 13X. Metal organic frameworks, due to their exceptional tunability, can improve the performance of adsorption processes. Nevertheless, there is a lack of experimental results for these materials at pilot scale. To address this gap, a versatile VPSA lab-scale pilot (3 columns of 1.1 L) has been developed to evaluate adsorbents at kilogram scale for CO₂ capture in various adsorption process configurations. The metal organic framework MIL 160(Al), synthesized and shaped at 60 kg, was also studied on this installation and compared to zeolite 13X with a 3-bed 6-step VPSA cycle for the separation of a 15/85 %vol of CO₂/N₂ mixture between 0.1 and 2 bar. Results obtained reveal purity of 90 % and recovery of 92.7 % for the MIL-160(Al) while zeolite 13X only reaches 79.7 % of purity and 85 % of recovery, proving the efficiency of this material for CO₂ capture. These results contradict conventional indicators and demonstrate the importance of testing a material in VPSA cycle at kg scale to fully assess its performance.