Lab-scale pilot for CO2 capture vacuum pressure swing adsorption: MIL-160(Al) vs zeolite 13X

Carbon capture is among the key technologies to quickly reduce anthropogenic CO2 emissions to a net zero emission by 2050. Among the different separation technologies, adsorption is one of the most promising. Several Vacuum and/or Pressure Swing Adsorption cycles have been developed and tested for CO2 capture using mainly zeolite 13X. Metal organic frameworks, due to their exceptional tunability, can improve the performance of adsorption processes. Nevertheless, there is a lack of experimental results for these materials at pilot scale. To address this gap, a versatile VPSA lab-scale pilot (3 columns of 1.1 L) has been developed to evaluate adsorbents at kilogram scale for CO2 capture in various adsorption process configurations. The metal organic framework MIL 160(Al), synthesized and shaped at 60 kg, was also studied on this installation and compared to zeolite 13X with a 3-bed 6-step VPSA cycle for the separation of a 15/85 %vol of CO2/N2 mixture between 0.1 and 2 bar. Results obtained reveal purity of 90 % and recovery of 92.7 % for the MIL-160(Al) while zeolite 13X only reaches 79.7 % of purity and 85 % of recovery, proving the efficiency of this material for CO2 capture. These results contradict conventional indicators and demonstrate the importance of testing a material in VPSA cycle at kg scale to fully assess its performance.