CO2 absorption of polymers of ammonium-based ionic liquid monomers

The topic of global warming as a result of increased atomospheric CO2 concentration is becoming the most important environmental issue that the world faces today.[1] The capture and separation of CO2, especially CO2 from large point source, for example, fossil-fuel-fired electrical power–generation plants is critical to stabilize the atomospheric CO2 concentration.[2] The existing commercial CO2 capture facilities are based on the wet scrubbing process using aqueous alkanolamine solutions. It had disadvantages of energy intensive (i.e. high energy penalty), amine loss and degradation, release of volatile organic compounds, and equipment corrosion.[1] Recently, ionic liquids were proposed as non-volatile, and reversible absorbents for CO2 separation because CO2 is remarkably soluble in ionic liquids. However, the high viscosity limits their eventual use in large scale gas scrubbing applications.[3]