A strategy to synthesis amine-functional Poly(Divinylbenzene)HIPEs with controllable porous structure for effective CO2 adsorption

A novel PolyHIPEs with hierarchically porous structures was prepared by the polymerization of divinylbenzene via high internal phase emulsions (HIPEs) template method. The proper pore-forming agents and post-crosslinking strategy were used to create and tailor the meso- and micro-porous structure on Poly(Divinylbenzene)HIPEs. Pentaethylenehexamine (PEHA) was introduced in PolyHIPEs to prepare solid amine adsorbents for CO 2 capture. The increase of specific surface area from 81.80 to 1003.02 m 2 /g indicated the successful porous structure design of PolyHIPEs. Dynamic CO 2 adsorption experiment results proved that the Micro-PDVB-0.3PEHA and H-PDVB-0.3PEHA didn’t show satisfactory CO 2 adsorption performance, though the two supports had remarkably higher specific surface area. They showed lower CO 2 adsorption capacities of 0.78 and 1.36 mmol/g respectively at 40 ℃ than that of C-PDVB-0.3PEHA (2.73 mmol/g) and Meso-PDVB-0.3PEHA (3.66 mmol/g) with mesoporous structure. The results of CO 2 -TPD experiment and kinetics investigation verified that the loading amine compounds would preferentially fill into and block the micropores, which would hinder CO 2 molecules to diffuse into the inner part of the filling amine in turn, thus reduce the amine utilization efficiency. Meso-PDVB-0.4PEHA from Meso-PDVB with abundant mesopores, exhibited the highest CO 2 adsorption capacity of 4.52 and 4.99 mmol/g with N efficiency of 0.61 and 0.67 under dry and wet condition, respectively. The excellent regeneration performance of Meso-PDVB-0.4PEHA, combined with its superior CO 2 adsorption capacity and ultra-high N efficiency, makes it a promising adsorbent for CO 2 capture from flue gas.