Investigation of CO2-Sorption Characteristics of Readily Available Solid Materials for Indoor Direct Air Capturing

Direct air capturing (DAC) is an energy demanding process for CO2-removal from air. Ongoing research focuses on the potential of indoor air as DAC-feed to profit from currently unused energetic synergies between DAC and the built environment. In this work, we investigated the performance of three different readily available, solid DAC-adsorbers under typical indoor environmental conditions of 16-25°C, 25-60% relative humidity (RH), and CO2-concentrations of less than 800 ppm above atmospheric concentrations. The measured mass-specific CO2-adsorption capacities of K2CO3-impregnated activated carbon, polyethylenimine-snow (PEI-snow), and polyethylenimine (PEI) on silica amount to 6.5 ± 0.3   mg   g − 1 , 52.9 ± 4.9   mg   g − 1 , and 56.9 ± 4.2   mg   g − 1 , respectively. Among the three investigated adsorber materials, PEI on silica is the most promising candidate for DAC-applications as its synthesis is rather simple, the CO2-desorption is feasible at moderate conditions of about 80°C at 100 mbar, and the competing co-adsorption of water does not strongly affect the CO2-adsorption under the investigated experimental conditions.