Interfacial polymerization of poly(ethylenimine) on PAN hollow fibers for direct air capture of CO2

Due to CO2 emission, cost-effective sorbents with prominent performance draw attentions. In this work, solid amine polyacrylonitrile (PAN) hollow fibers (HFs) were readily prepared by a simple and scalable interfacial polymerization (IP). Through this method an amino layer was coated on PAN hollow fiber under mild and environment benign condition. The chemical structure of as-fabricated solid amine PAN HF was characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) measurements, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The performance of solid amine PAN HF in capturing CO2 under ambient air was investigated. The CO2- saturated solid amine PAN HF could be effectively regenerated by temperature-vacuum swing desorption (TVS) process. Moreover, the durability of the solid amine PAN HF was studied through multiple CO2 capture cycles. Even after 18 cycles of adsorption and desorption, there was no significant loss in CO2 adsorption capacity. This study paves a way for large-scale fabrication solid amine hollow fibers for direct air capture of CO2.