Functionalization of MOFs for Enhancing CO2 Capture

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is considered to be one of the main promoters for climate change. Carbon dioxide is a product of the combustion of fossil fuels used in power generation, process industry and others. The recent UN Climate Change Conference (Copenhagen, 2009) emphasized the urgent need for establishing international measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions which will create increasing pressure on all over the globe and on various industries in KSA. Fossil fuels are the dominant source of the global primary energy demand, and will likely remain so for the next several decades. Carbon capture (CC) is essential to enable the use of fossil fuels while reducing the emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere, and thereby mitigating global climate change. Investments in separation technology should be made in order to make CO2 separation a viable and attractive technique for mitigating carbon emissions. Research and development on carbon capture has grown rapidly over the past decades and further research is needed to address technical challenges towards reduced cost of CO2 capture. The proposed research is aimed at developing technologies for reducing carbon dioxide emissions through use of adsorption material such as MOFs. The main objective of this project is the development, characterization, testing, and evaluation of certain MOFs for reducing CO2 emissions. The work involves the acquisition and synthesis of highly efficient adsorption materials namely metal organic frameworks (MOFs) such as MOF-74, MOF-177, MOF-200, MOF-205 and MOF 210. Then, the developed MOFs material will be compared based on CO2 intake capacity at different conditions and selected MOFs will be functionalized by amine group to enhance CO2 capture capacity