Allan Michel Simões Piva, Gerson Prando, José Carlos Morilla Karina Tamião de Campos Roseno, Aldo Ramos Santos, Marlene Silva de Moraes, Deovaldo de Moraes Júnior

Abstract

Gaseous effluents from industries or large urban areas are considered to be responsible for the strengthening of many climactic phenomena like the greenhouse effect. One of the most emitted gases is the carbon dioxide (CO₂), able to be mitigated by the adsorption technique. Commercial adsorbents like the activated carbon present a high efficiency allied to a high cost, generating researches involving cheaper adsorbents. The objective of this work was to determinate the CO₂ adsorption capacity in activated carbon on a bench scale fixed-bed column. The experimental unit consisted of a glass column with an internal diameter of 32,7 mm, fed at the top with a mixture of synthetic air  (21,13 L/h) and CO₂ (17,14 L/h), which residence time was 12 s. The fixed bed was composed of 65 g of powdered activated carbon and had a height of 149 mm. The adsorption capacity determination was carried with the breakthrough curve method. The activated carbon was saturated after 520 s, being able to remove 59,1% of the CO₂ fed. Using the collected data the adsorption capacity was 0,934 mmol_CO2/g_adsorbent, less than what is reported on the literature (1,2 to 1,5 mmol_CO2/g_adsorbent) in similar conditions. In conclusion the experimental deviation was caused by a lack of temperature control and the low residence time for the gas.