Effective Capture of Carbon Dioxide Using Hydrated Sodium Carbonate Powders

The emission of CO(2) has been considered a major cause of greenhouse effects and global warming. The current CO(2) capture approaches have their own advantages and weaknesses. We found that free-flowing hydrated sodium carbonate (Na(2)CO(3)) powders with 30 wt % water can achieve a very high CO(2) sorption capacity of 282 mg/g within 60 min and fast CO(2) uptake (90% saturation uptake within 16 min). The results suggest that the alkaline solution resulting from the dissolution of partial Na(2)CO(3) can freely attach onto the hydrated Na(2)CO(3) particles, which provides an excellent gas–liquid interface for CO(2) capture, leading to significantly enhanced CO(2) sorption capacity and kinetics.