A New Class of Single-Component Absorbents for Reversible Carbon Dioxide Capture under Mild Conditions

With the aim of developing more efficient, less cost-intensive absorbents for CO2 separation from different gas mixtures, we formulated solvent-free, single-component absorbents based on inexpensive, commercially available secondary amines that combined a high absorption efficiency with a reduced volume of absorbent and unprecedentedly small differences between absorption and desorption temperatures at ambient pressure. Unlike traditional aqueous amines, our solvent-free absorbents captured CO2 with high efficiency, while avoiding great volumes of water and did not suffer from a dramatic increase in viscosity upon carbonation of the ionic-liquid-based absorbents.