| Popis: |
Carbon capture has been regarded as one of the viable solutions to mitigate the global warming effect due to CO2 emission and sustain the use of fossil fuels, but the energy load associated with implementing carbon capture in coal-fired power stations can notably decrease the efficiency of power generation. To overcome the deficiency, exploring novel materials for carbon capture has drawn significant attention. Specifically, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been identified as promising adsorbents for carbon capture because of their highly tunable nature, selective adsorption, and large adsorption capacity. A large number of MOFs have been discovered in recent years, and many of them have been demonstrated to possess promising separation performance. To date, most of the studies reported have mainly focused on exploring potential MOF candidates by evaluating their adsorption properties (e.g., selectivity) or their performance using a process model. Although MOFs have been demonstrated to show potentially better performance (i.e., less energy intensity) than MEA, the overall impact by this emerging new class of materials remains unknown. To this end, to facilitate the development of a new technology based on MOF adsorbents, the overall impacts of implementing MOF-based carbon capture, including the energy load and resource depletion from the MOF synthesis process as well as other steps in the whole life cycle of MOFs, should be considered. In this study, we present a comprehensive life-cycle analysis for a selected set of 50 MOFs to evaluate the overall impact of MOF-based post-combustion carbon capture and compared with that by MEA. Our results again show the great promise of MOFs in carbon capture. From the life cycle point of view, besides the energy load of capturing carbon using MOFs, we find significant impacts from the use of solvent in MOF-based carbon capture. Furthermore, the key role of MOF stability is also identified in determining the overall impact. The study will provide insights for the development of MOF-based carbon capture, and the established analysis framework herein can also be used to facilitate the development of MOFs in other applications. |
