Development of adsorbent hollow fiber for CO2 application

The overall objective of the project is to screen an efficient adsorbent for adsorption/separation of CO₂ from industries by using a novel adsorbent hollow fiber material. In the design of an adsorption based CO₂ adsorption device, the choice of the adsorbent is the most crucial design consideration. In this paper, several CO₂ selective adsorbents will be trialed and the adsorbent hollow fibers will be prepared and tested in order to optimize robustness/integrity and selectivity. These adsorbent hollow fibers are light, could be as small as 0.5 mm to 3 mm in diameter. It is ideal as fiber cartridges for CO₂ removal from enclosed spaces, because of their small dimension, and the open finger-like structure giving ready diffusion of small CO₂ molecules and the high surface-to-volume ratio that can be achieved (>3000 m²/m³). The open finger-like structure in the adsorbent hollow fibers provides more accessibility for the adsorbate molecules to reach the adsorption sites and hence gives better kinetic performance. The results show that an adsorbent hollow fiber module has a far sharper breakthrough curves and longer times to breakthrough for CO₂, than for equivalent beds of pellets, and the 13X hollow fibers have a superior performance for the adsorption of CO₂ over the other hollow fibers. This means that the adsorbent hollow fibers with the advantages of higher surface-to-volume ratio, low pressure drop and low mass transfer resistance give great potential on CO₂ adsorption and further environmental applications.