Desorption Kinetics and Mechanisms of CO2 on Amine-Based Mesoporous Silica Materials

Tetraethylenepentamine (TEPA)-based mesoporous MCM-41 is used as the adsorbent to determine the CO2 desorption kinetics of amine-modified materials after adsorption. The experimental data of CO2 desorption as a function of time are derived by zero-length column at different temperatures (35, 50, and 70 ◦C) and analyzed by Avrami’s fractional-order kinetic model. A new method is used to distinguish the physical desorption and chemical desorption performance of surface-modified mesoporous MCM-41. The activation energy Ea of CO2 physical desorption and chemical desorption calculated from Arrhenius equation are 15.86 kJ/mol and 57.15 kJ/mol, respectively. Furthermore, intraparticle diffusion and Boyd’s film models are selected to investigate the mechanism of CO2 desorption from MCM-41 and surface-modified MCM-41. For MCM-41, there are three rate-limiting steps during the desorption process. Film diffusion is more prominent for the CO2 desorption rates at low temperatures, and pore diffusion mainly governs the rate-limiting process under higher temperatures. Besides the surface reaction, the desorption process contains four rate-limiting steps on surface-modified MCM-41.