CO2 capture from biogas: absorbent selection

The development of proper biogas upgrading technology offers a viable means to utilize biogas in conventional power systems. In this paper, various molecular and ionic solvent systems were evaluated for CO2 removal from biogas in a loop reactor system. The performance of amine solutions, ionic liquids and their mixtures, amino acid salts and solutions blended with piperazine was compared in terms of their CO2 loading capacity. The experimental results revealed that addition of small amounts of piperazine can increase on average by 30 vol% the efficiency of above-mentioned solutions. The CO2 capturing capacity achieved for the most promising solvents was in the range of 50-60 L CO2/L absorbent. The regeneration of the solvent mixtures can be challenging since the solvents could loose 16-43 vol% of their initial efficiency upon CO2 release. The ionic liquid [C(4)mim][acetate] was found to be an efficient VOCs scrubbing media. Moreover, upon use of this ionic liquid, the amount of identified volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the studied samples was reduced by 65 wt%, while the use of 15 wt% aqueous N-methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) resulted only in 32 wt% reduction in the amount of VOCs.