SAGE-Amine: Generative Amine design with multi-property optimization for efficient CO2 capture

Efficient CO₂ capture is vital for mitigating climate change, with amine-based solvents being widely used due to their strong reactivity with CO₂. However, optimizing key properties such as basicity, viscosity, and absorption capacity remains challenging, as traditional methods rely on labor-intensive experimentation and predefined chemical databases, limiting the exploration of novel solutions. Here, SAGE-Amine was introduced, a generative modeling approach that integrates Scoring-Assisted Generative Exploration (SAGE) with quantitative structure-property relationship models to design new amines tailored for CO₂ capture. Unlike conventional virtual screening restricted to existing compounds, SAGE-Amine generates novel amines by leveraging autoregressive natural language processing models trained on amine datasets. SAGE-Amine identified known amines for CO₂ capture from scratch and successfully performed single-property optimization, increasing basicity or reducing viscosity or vapor pressure. Furthermore, it facilitated multi-property optimization, simultaneously achieving high basicity with low viscosity and vapor pressure. The 10 top-ranked amines were suggested using SAGE-Amine and their thermodynamic properties were further assessed using COSMO-RS simulations, confirming their potential for CO₂ capture. These results highlight the potential of generative modeling in accelerating the discovery of amine solvents and expanding the possibilities for industrial CO₂ capture applications.