Acquiring an Efficient Warm‐CO2 Sorbent from Advanced Pyrolysis of Magnesium Oxalate

Abstract For the first time, porous MgO with a Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area over 200 m 2 g −1 can be simply obtained from pyrolysis of common magnesium oxalate without any solvent or additive. The obtained porous MgO had a large surface area of 278.5 m 2 g −1 and captured 30.8 mg g −1 of CO 2 in the instantaneous adsorption at 473 K, comparable with many MgO‐based sorbents prepared through complex procedures. Use of a U‐pipe furnace along with the specific “throughout” sweeping mode of nitrogen carrier gas enable this efficient warm‐CO 2 sorbent to be fabricated in a simple way. Factors including contacting modes between precursor salt and flowing gas, flow rate, type of gas and salt were carefully studied, and related to the pore structure and adsorption character of the MgO samples. Apart from the capability of trapping CO 2 mixed with SO 2 and NO at 473 K, the MgO sample showed a high ratio of exposed strong basic sites (70.5 %), which provides a useful solid strong base for control of CO 2 in flue gas.