Experimental Study of Carbon Dioxide Absorption in Diethyl Ethanolamine (DEEA) in the Presence of Titanium Dioxide (TiO2)

Fossil fuels are the main source of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere, which are sources of air pollutants. Environmental research has confirmed that atmospheric CO2 concentration has risen from 280 ppm in 1800 to 358 ppm in 1994 (an increase of 27.86%). Russia, the United States, China, the rest of the Asian countries, Latin American countries, and African countries accounted for 27, 22, 11, 13, 4, and 3% of the total global CO2 production, respectively. Various processes based on hydrogen sulfide and other acidic gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon disulfide, mercaptans, and carbonyl sulfide have been introduced for natural gas sweetening. One of these processes involves the use of solvents. In the present research, a device that measures solubility of gases in liquids was employed to measure solubility of CO2 in solvent DEEA in the presence of TiO2 at different solvent concentrations (10, 15, 20% w/w), various pressures (5, 10, and 15bar) and different TiO2 concentrations (0.05 and 0.1% w/w) at ambient temperature. Results showed that solubility increased from 25.8 to 42.4% v/v at constant pressure and without the presence of a nanoparticle in the absence of TiO2 at solvent concentrations ranging from 10 to 15% w/w. At a constant concentration of the solvent (15% w/w), solubility increased from 31.8 to 36.7% when the pressure was raised from 10 to 15 bar. Moreover, solubility increased from 32.7 to 36.7% v/v at constant solvent concentration (15% w/w) and pressure (15bar) when TiO2 concentration was raised.