1. Metal Oxide Nanoparticles for Carbon Dioxide Capture
Liah Dukaye| Zelong Xie| Rebecca Chin| Jillian Zummo | Lauren Burke| Jacob Cardinal| Christopher Cogswell| Sunho Choi
CO2 capture and storage is the process of capturing carbon dioxide waste from large point
sources. This process is an essential component of by-product elimination in carbon-
containing fuels. Currently, known adsorbents suffer from low efficiencies and selectivities.1 In
the field of CO2 capture, synthesizing a material that has the ability to adsorb CO2 while also
possessing a large surface area for capture is critical.2 This research explores the potential of
metal oxide nanoparticles as a CO2 capture material, specifically magnesium oxide, because
of their ability to chemically adsorb CO2. A main drawback of metal oxide nanoparticles is the
difficulty of making them with high pore volumes or surface areas, which plays a significant
role in materials’ capture capacity and recyclability. Our method of synthesizing metal oxide
nanoparticles constitutes calcining metal organic frameworks in order to volatilize the
organics away and to form porous oxide networks with the metals and is hoped to yield
materials with high surface areas and pore volumes. After synthesizing magnesium oxide
nanoparticles, we test them for carbon dioxide capture. Preliminary results show that our
materials may increase regeneration resistance of the solid. Further investigation is
necessary to draw anymore conclusions, including developing robust carbon dioxide capture
and recycling test methods.
Northeastern University
• Find a synthesis method that will allow the material to be
recycled without losing the desired surface roughness
for capture and maintains a large surface area
• Produce an MgO structure that has significant CO2
capacity as well as regenerability.
• Use a metal organic framework (MOF) as “template” for
synthesis
• Calcination of magnesium oxide from a MOF template at (1)
various calcination temperatures (resting temperature) and
(2) various heating rates (rising temperature).
• Carbon dioxide has a large effect on global climate change.
• Methods to capture carbon dioxide over the past few decades have
improved but are still needed.
• Liquid amine is state of the art, but is corrosive and inefficient.
• Solids are non-toxic, non-corrosive, and have shown high capacity
capabilities.
• Metal oxides show high capacity but degrade easily.
• We create new forms of metal oxides that will limit degradation and
enlarge surface area for high capacity by using metal organic
frameworks as a foundation due to their 3D structure
AbstractIntroduction Research Goals and Method
Data and Results
Conclusions and Future Work
References
Acknowledgments
• Magnesium oxide calcined from a MOF has a relatively high capture capacity at 0.57
mml CO2 in comparison to other metal oxides after recycling.
• MgO also proves regenerable at least 10 cycles and maintaining carbon capture capacity
with less then 1% change each cycle.
• We plan to develop an understanding about the characteristics of this material that allow
it to retain capture capacity after recycling by doing similar studies with other metals and
MOF “templates”.
Table 2: BET analysis shows MgO calcined at 4500C with a heating rate of 50oC has the
highest surface area, pore volume, and CO2 uptake
Figure 7: Structural analysis using XRD of Mg(BDC)-C and MgO at various calcination temperatures. High intensity and sharp peaks
show greater crystallinity of structure and confirm the presence of MgO
Table 1: BET analysis shows Mg(BDC) calcined between 425oC and 5500C have
ideal surface area, pore volume, and CO2 uptake
Dr. Mukerjee and Bill Fowle,
Northeastern University Department of Chemical Engineering
[1] Cogswell et al. "Materials for Carbon Capture." Springer 2016.
[2] Andirova et al. “Effect of the Structural Constituents of Metal Organic Frameworks on Carbon
Dioxide Capture.” Microporous and Mesoporous Materials 2015
Heating Rates at 450°C Calcination
Temp
Surface Area (m²/g)
Total pore volume
(cc/g)
CO2 Uptake
(mmol/g)
Mg(BDC)-C-5°C/min 123.75 0.9875 0.6226
Mg(BDC)-C-25°C/min 180.897 1.476 0.6489
Mg(BDC)-C-50°C/min 328.58 1.844 0.7705
Mg(BDC)-C-100°C/min 38.859 0.3004 0.6858
Calcination
Temperatures
Surface Area (m²/g)
Total pore volume
(cc/g)
CO2 Uptake
(mmol/g)
Mg(BDC) 4.960 0.06079 --
Mg(BDC)-C-350°C 3.598 0.10230 0.2134
Mg(BDC)-C-400°C 25.142 0.27110 --
Mg(BDC)-C-425°C 31.152 0.23450 0.2085
Mg(BDC)-C-450°C 36.911 0.41990 0.3469
Mg(BDC)-C-550°C 43.071 0.49590 0.3258
Figure 2: MgO is formed after calcination
at 4500C with 50C/min heating rate,
Figure 3: MgO calcined at 4500C,
with a heating rate of 500C/min
Figure 1: Mg(BDC); Magnesium oxide
MOF before calcination
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80
NormalizedIntensity
2θ Degrees
Mg(BDC)-C-650°C
Mg(BDC)-C-550°C
Mg(BDC)-C-450°C
Mg(BDC)-C-425°C
Mg(BDC)-C-400°C
Mg(BDC)-C-350°C
Mg(BDC)(H2O)
Figure 4: TEM of original Mg(BDC) MOF Figure 5: TEM of MgO 4500C, 50C/min Figure 6: TEM of MgO 4500C, 500C/min
Table 3: The regenerability of MgO is indicated by it’s ability to retain at least 75% capacity after 5 cycles.
Synthetization with a heating rate of 50°C/min shows the highest capacity.
Cycle
(mmol/g) (%) (mmol/g) (%) (mmol/g) (%)
1 0.6228 100 0.7705 100 0.6858 100
2 0.5126 82 0.6054 79 0.5460 80
3 0.5047 81 0.5891 76 0.5336 78
4 0.4988 80 0.5842 76 0.5251 77
5 0.4937 79 0.5791 75 0.5204 76
5°C/min 50°C/min 100°C/min
Cyclic CO2 Capacity with Respect to Heating Rates