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![]() Journal of Encapsulation and Adsorption Sciences, 2013, 3, 57-63 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jeas.2013.32007 Published Online June 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jeas) Study on the Effect of Preparation Parameters of K2CO3/Al2O3 Sorbent on CO2 Capture Capacity at Flue Gas Operating Conditions Javad Esmaili, Mohammad Reza Ehsani Department of Chemical Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran Email: javad [email protected], [email protected] Received February 6, 2013; revised March 6, 2013; accepted March 14, 2013 Copyright © 2013 Javad Esmaili, Mohammad Reza Ehsani. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ABSTRACT In this paper, study on the effect of preparation conditions of K2CO3/Al2O3 sorbent was done. Box-Behnken design was applied to study the influence of four parameters involve initial solution concentration, impregnation time and calcina- tion step temperature and time. A quadratic model was used to correlate the sorbent capture capacity. The model was used to calculate the optimum conditions for preparing sorbent. From the analysis of variance (ANOVA), the most in- fluential factor on each experimental design response was identified. The potassium-based sorbents used in this study were prepared by impregnating K2CO3 on Al2O3 support. The CO2 capture capacity was measured in the presence of H2O in a fixed-bed reactor at CO2 capture temperature of 60˚C using breakthrough curves. The optimum sorbent pre- pared by this method showed CO2 capture capacity of 77.21 mg CO2/g sorbent. It was observed that the experimental values obtained were in good agreement with the values predicted by the model, with relatively small errors between the predicted and the actual values. The results obtained in this study can be used as basic data for study on design and operating condition optimization of CO2 capture process using these sorbents. Keywords: CO2 Capture; K2CO3/Al2O3 Sorbent; Response Surface Method; Box-Behnken Design 1. Introduction Global warming increasingly thought to be associated with the atmospheric emission of greenhouse gases. Car- bon Dioxide is a major greenhouse gas that is released into the atmosphere due to the use of fossil fuels. It can be removed from flue gas by various methods such as membrane separation, amine scrubbing, and using mole- cular sieves [1-3]. These methods however are costly and energy intensive. Solid sorbent processes for CO2 capture are also under study. The use of solid sorbents can be a highly cost-effec- tive and energy efficient way to remove CO2 [4-7]. Sor- bents containing alkali and alkaline-earth metals like po- tassium carbonate and calcium oxide are investigated for this commercial feasibility [8]. Alkaline-earth method-based sorbents such as MgO and CaO are applicable at much higher adsorption and regeneration temperatures [7]. Alkali metal-based sor- bents were employed in CO2 adsorption at low tempera- tures (50˚C - 70˚C) with thermal regeneration easily oc- curring at low temperatures (<200˚C). CO2 capture using a dry sodium-based sorbent was also reported [9,10]. How- ever, when CO2 reacted with Na2CO3, the global carbona- tion reaction rate was rather slow [11]. The CO2 adsorp- tion and regeneration of potassium-based sorbents with several supports such as activated carbon [4,5,12], TiO2, SiO2, MgO, ZrO2, CaO and Al2O3 were studied [6,9,13, 14]. Al2O3 is one of the most proper materials used as sorbent support. In most of the previous works, the sorbent prepara- tion conditions were fixed and the effect of the different conditions on the capture capacity which is an important specification of the sorbent for commercial applications, has not been studied yet. The objective of this work was to study the influence of preparation condition on sorbent capture capacity and finding optimum condition for pre- paration of sorbent at larger scales. Therefore, the scope of this research was to carry out a statistical optimization to determine the optimum preparation conditions of K2CO3/ Al2O3 sorbent, in order to achieve high CO2 capture ca- pacity using the response surface methodology approach C opyright © 2013 SciRes. JEAS ![]() J. ESMAILI, M. R. EHSANI 58 (RSM). Response surface methodology (RSM) is an em- pirical statistical technique employed for multiple regres- sion analysis by using quantitative data. It solves multi- variate data which is obtained from properly designed experiments to solve multivariate equation simultaneous- ly [15]. This method was applied by many of researcher for study on various multi-variable phenomena [16,17]. 2. Experimental 2.1. Preparation of Sorbent The potassium-based sorbents used in this study were prepared by impregnating K2CO3 on Al2O3 (Aluminum Oxide, Merck) as support. Twenty (20.0) g of Al2O3 was added to an aqueous solution of anhydrous potassium carbonate (K2CO3, Merck) with particular concentration in deionized water (Initial solution concentration). Then, it was mixed with a magnetic stirrer at room temperature (Impregnation time). After that, the mixture was dried in a rotary vacuum evaporator at 60˚C. The dried samples were calcined in a furnace under a N2 flow (100 cc/min) for a particular time at selected temperature (Calcination time and temperature). 2.2. Apparatus and Procedures A fixed-bed Stainless-Steel reactor (diameter of 15 mm), which was placed in an electric furnace under atmos- pheric pressure was used for adsorption process. Two (2.0) g of the sorbent was packed into the reactor. In or- der to prevent condensation of water vapor injected into the reactor and GC column the temperatures of the inlet and outlet lines of the reactor were maintained above 100˚C. The column used in this analysis was a 1/8 in. stainless tube packed with Porapak Q. When the CO2 concentration of the outlet gas reached the same level as that of the inlet gas in the CO2 adsorption process, proc- ess was stopped. The outlet gas from the reactor was au- tomatically analyzed every 5 min by a thermal conduc- tivity detector (TCD), which was equipped with an auto sampler (Valco online valve). Schematic diagram of the fixed-bed reactor is shown in Figure 1. The feed stream comprises of Nitrogen, carbon diox- ide and water. The liquid water flow rate was controlled using a piston pump and the water was vaporized before entering the column. Both CO2 and N2 flow rates were controlled by independent mass flow controllers and Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the fixed-bed reactor. Copyright © 2013 SciRes. JEAS ![]() J. ESMAILI, M. R. EHSANI 59 these gases were mixed with the vaporized water inside the oven where experiments were done. All the CO2 sor- ption tests were performed following the same proce- dure. The CO2 capture capacity of the sorbent was evaluated by the breakthrough curve for CO2 adsorption. In this study, the CO2 capture capacity of sorbent was calculated from its breakthrough curve during CO2 adsorption in the presence of 9.0 vol.% H2O and 1 vol.% CO2. The CO2 capture capacity describes the amount of CO2 absorbed until the output concentration of CO2 reached 1 vol.%, which was is the same value as that of the inlet. 2.3. Design of Experiments The RSM has several classes of designs, with its own properties and characteristics. Central composite design (CCD), Box-Behnken design (BBD) and three-level fac- torial design are the most popular designs applied by the researchers. In this work, the Box-Behnken design was used to study the effects of the variables towards their responses and subsequently in the optimization studies. This method is suitable for fitting a quadratic surface and it helps to optimize the effective parameters with a mi- nimum number of experiments, as well as to analyze the interaction between the parameters. In order to determine if there exist a relationship between the factors and the response variables investigated, the data collected must be analyzed in a statistically manner using regression. A regression design is normally employed to model a re- sponse as a mathematical function (either known or em- pirical) of a few continuous factors and good model para- meter estimates are desired [18]. Replicates of the test at the center are very important as they provide an independent estimation of the experi- mental error. Each variable is investigated at two levels. Meanwhile, as the number of factors, n, increases, the number of runs for a complete replicate of the design in- creases rapidly. In this case, main effects and interactions may be estimated by fractional factorial designs running only a minimum number of experiments. Individual sec- ond-order effects cannot be estimated separately by 2n factorial designs. The responses and the corresponding parameters are modeled and optimized using ANOVA to estimate the statistical parameters by means of response surface methods. Basically this optimization process involves three ma- jor steps, which are, performing the statistically designed experiments, estimating the coefficients in a mathemati- cal model and predicting the response and checking the adequacy of the model. It is assumed that the independent variables are con- tinuous and controllable by experiments with negligible errors. It is required to find a suitable approximation for the true functional relationship between independent va- riables and the response surface [19]. The experimental sequence was randomized in order to minimize the effects of the uncontrolled factors. Re- gression analysis was performed to determine the surface response as function of second order polynomial equa- tion: 0 1 2 1=1 =+ ++ kk k i iii iiij ij ii iij Q x xx x (1) where Q is the predicted response (sorbent capture ca- pacity), βi, βii, βij represent linear, quadratic and interac- tion effects. β0 is the intercept term and xi, xj, …, xk are the input variables which affect the Q value [20]. In this work the influence of four sorbent preparation parameters involve initial solution concentration, impreg- nation time and calcination step temperature and time on sorbent CO2 capture capacity has been studied. The range of these variables selected base on previous works of other researchers [6,7,13,14] (Table 1). 3. Results and Discussion 3.1. Development of Regression Model Equation The design of experiment is given in Table 2, together with the experimental results. Eight replicate runs were observed at the centre of the design to allow the estima- tion pure error. Using multiple regression analysis, the second order po- lynomial model (Equation (1)), which characterizes the relationship between sorbent capture capacity and studi- ed variables, was obtained. The coefficients of polyno- mial are shown in Table 3. Response surface plots were described by the regres- sion model for BBD which was developed using MINI- TAB 14 software. The student’s t-test was performed to determine the significance of the regression coefficients. The results of statistical analysis including the regression coefficient, t and p values for linear, quadratic and com- bined effects of the variables are given in Table 3. The statistical significance of the model was also determined by F-test for analysis of variance (ANOVA) and re- Table 1. Experimental range and le vels of indepe ndent var i- ables for preparation of sorbents. Code levels Independent variables SymbolsUnit −1 0 1 Initial solution concentration ISC wt% 10 25 40 Impregnation time ITI hr 1 12 23 Calcination time CTI hr 3 4 5 Calcination temperature CTE ˚C 300 400 500 Copyright © 2013 SciRes. JEAS ![]() J. ESMAILI, M. R. EHSANI 60 Table 2. Box-Behnken design matrix, the experimental and predicted values of sorption capture capacity. Sorbent preparation variables ( Code levels ) Sorbent capture capacity (mg/g) Run ISC ITI CTI CTE Experimental Predicted 1 1 0 −1 0 71.61 75.49 2 0 −1 0 1 69.63 64.98 3 0 0 0 0 74.25 74.19 4 −1 0 0 −1 52.89 55.07 5 0 1 0 1 72.19 68.32 6 1 0 1 0 79.09 76.66 7 1 0 0 −1 74.14 77.37 8 1 −1 0 0 73.19 76.84 9 −1 0 1 0 55.31 54.72 10 0 0 1 1 64.89 65.81 11 −1 1 0 0 54.97 56.99 12 1 0 0 1 71.34 71.67 13 0 1 −1 0 69.87 71.49 14 −1 0 −1 0 49.67 52.82 15 0 0 0 0 71.26 74.19 16 1 1 0 0 75.35 78.83 17 −1 0 0 1 52.69 49.37 18 −1 −1 0 0 53.19 54.07 19 0 1 1 0 75.51 73.06 20 0 −1 0 −1 69.46 71.56 21 0 0 −1 1 66.45 63.96 22 0 1 0 −1 70.04 73.14 23 0 0 1 −1 70.45 71.19 24 0 −1 1 0 72.51 70.57 25 0 0 0 0 76.07 74.19 26 0 0 −1 −1 66.85 69.98 27 0 −1 −1 0 68.71 69.07 Table 3. Estimated regression coefficients of second order polynomial model for optimization of sorbent preparation (R2 = 0.971). Coefficient Estimated coefficient t-Value p-Value β0 −57.431 −2.553 0.025 β1 (ISC) 2.3232 5.599 0.000 β2 (ITI) 0.1163 −0.290 0.777 β3 (CTI) 20.014 2.717 0.019 β4 (CTE) 0.2803 3.757 0.003 β11 (ISC2) −0.0303 −8.900 0.000 β22 (ITI2) −0.0057 −0.566 0.582 β33 (CTI2) −2.4512 −2.432 0.032 β44 (CTE2) −0.0004 −3.781 0.003 β12 (ISC*ITI) −0.0014 0.090 0.930 β13 (ISC*CTI) −0.0120 0.434 0.672 β14 (ISC*CTE) 0.0000 −0.613 0.551 β23 (ITI*CTI) 0.0018 0.434 0.672 β24 (ITI*CTE) 0.0004 0.467 0.649 β34 (CTI*CTE) 0.0016 −1.217 0.247 siduals analysis was performed to validate the model at 97% of confidence level. The model fitted well with amylase activity and the optimal values from the model was justified (p = 0.000). The ANOVA given in Table 4 indicates that the linear, quadratic terms in second order polynomial Model were highly significant (p < 0.001) and adequate to represent the relationship between sor- bent capture capacity (mg/g) and initial solution concen- tration, impregnation time and calcination step temperature and time. Figures 2 and 3 show the three-dimensional response surface which were constructed to show the interaction effect of the sorbent preparation variables on the sorbent capture capacity. Table 4. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) of second order po- lynomial model for optimization of sorbent capture capaci- ty. Source Degree of freedom Sum of square Mean of square F-value P-value Regression 14 1794.5 128.182 28.54<0.001 Linear 4 1387.6 43.678 9.73 <0.001 Square 4 395.87 98.967 22.04<0.001 Interaction 6 11.06 1.843 0.41 0.858 Residual error12 53.89 4.491 Lack-of-Fit 10 42.09 4.209 0.71 0.709 Pure error 2 11.80 5.898 Total 26 1848.4 Figure 2. The combined effect of initial solution concentra- tion and impregnation time on sorbent capture capacity (CTE = 400˚C, CTI = 4 hr). Figure 3. The combined effect of calcination temperature and calcination time on sorbent capture capacity (ISC = 25%, ITI = 12 hr). Copyright © 2013 SciRes. JEAS ![]() J. ESMAILI, M. R. EHSANI 61 As can be seen in Figure 2, the sorbent capacity gen- erally increases with increase in initial solution concen- tration and impregnation time. This trend is the result of increase of potassium carbonate loading on sorbent with the increase of these parameters; but the rate of increas- ing is slow at higher values since the K2CO3 loading is limited. The initial solution concentration is more effec- tive than impregnation time; it shows that the rate of im- pregnation of K2CO3 on alumina support is high. As can be seen in Figure 3, the sorbent capacity has a maximum point with increase in calcination temperature and time and after this point it decreases. This trend is the result of improvement of sorbent structure in calcina- tion step that increases the sorbent capture capacity. At calcination step, the higher temperature and longer time damage some formed structures and decreases the sor- bent capacity. 3.2. Process Optimization In the production of commercial sorbent, relatively high sorbent capture capacity are expected. Therefore, in order to optimize preparation condition, Minitab 14 is used. The sorbent was prepared under the experimental condi- tions given in Table 5, together with the predicted and experimental values for sorbent capture capacity. The optimum sorbent prepared was obtained by using initial solution concentration of 32.3 wt%, impregnation time of 13.4 hr, calcination temperature of 367˚C and calcination time of 4.1 hr. The optimum sorbent showed capture ca- pacity of 77.21 mg CO2/g sorbent. It was observed that the experimental values obtained were in good agreement with the values predicted from the model, with relatively small errors between the predicted and the actual values (Table 5). Figure 4 shows the variation of sorbent capture capac- ity with the parameters at the optimum conditions. For the two parameters involve calcination time and tempe- rature, the optimum point locate at the curve maximum point. The overall trend of four curves represents that the initial solution concentration is the most effective pa- rameters on the final sorbent capture capacity. Figure 5, shows the breakthrough curves of the sor- bent prepared at the optimum conditions during CO2 ad- sorption in the presence of 9.0 vol.% H2O and 1 vol.% CO2 at 60˚C. It was observed that the breakthrough time was 16 min. Further study is required to enhance the CO2 adsorption rate. Table 5. Model validation. Sorbent capture capacity (mg/g) Initial solution concentration (wt%) Impregnation time (hr) Calcinations temperature (˚C) Calcination time (hr) Predicte d Experimental 32.3 13.4 367.0 4.1 78.66 77.21 (a) (b) (c) (d) Figure 4. The effect of four parameters on sorbent capture capacity at optimum conditions (× symbol shows optimum point for each curve). Copyright © 2013 SciRes. JEAS ![]() J. ESMAILI, M. R. EHSANI 62 Figure 5. The breakthrough curves of the sorbent prepare at optimum conditions during CO2 adsorption. 4. Conclusions The sorbent capacity for carbon dioxide capture from a gas stream is important for the industrial application of solid sorbents. The present investigation was carried out to study combined effects of the initial solution concen- tration, impregnation time, calcination temperature, and calcination time on the sorbent capture capacity using a Box-Behnken design under the Response surface metho- dology (RSM). The obtained results demonstrate that sorbent capacity increased with increasing the initial so- lution concentration and impregnation time. Sorbent ca- pacity has a maximum point for variation of calcination temperature and time and further increases of these vari- ables lead to decrease of sorbent capacity. However, ANOVA analysis as well as 3D surface plots revealed that initial solution concentration has the greatest effect on sorbent capacity. On the basis of the results it can be concluded that RSM presents an excellent tool which enables the evaluation of interactions and competitive effects in multivariable systems and reduces the number of needed experiments in contrast to the classical method of changing one variable at a time. 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