Efficient Ag₂O-Ag₂CO₃ Catalytic Cycle and Its Role in Minimizing the Energy Requirement of Amine Solvent Regeneration for CO₂ Capture

The worldwide large-scale deployment of the state-of-the-art CO₂ capture technique is being delayed due to the overwhelmingly high energy consumption in the stripper. Here, we reveal an efficient Ag₂O-Ag₂CO₃ catalytic cycle and analyze its activity in the amine solvent regeneration step which is capable of greatly minimizing the energy requirement by desorbing greater amounts of CO₂ at up to 1000% higher desorption rate, at low temperature, e.g. 80 °C. After substantially improving the CO₂ desorption, the Ag₂O converts into Ag₂CO₃ which is even more efficient. The Ag₂CO₃ ultimately decomposes into Ag₂O in the amine regeneration step, and this cycle continues. The validity of the cyclic catalytic behavior was tested for ten cycles. Furthermore, the mechanism of Ag₂O/Ag₂CO₃ facilitated CO₂ desorption was elucidated using ¹H and ¹³C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.