In industrial post-carbon capture processes, monoethanolamine (MEA) has been mainly used as an absorption solvent. However, this approach generates significant amounts of toxic wastewater containing a heavy chemical difficult to treat and also raises concerns about acute corrosion of metal structures in the facility. To reduce the use of MEA in carbon capture, this work evaluates the catalytic performance of nickel nanoparticles (NiNPs) for CO₂ capture as a possible additive in an MEA solvent. We test the CO₂ absorption rate in MEA catalyzed by NiNPs in both limited and high mixing conditions to model real capturing processes in the packed column of industrial absorption reactors. For this purpose, a microreactor and a long serpentine microchannel are employed. The catalytic absorption performance of NiNPs for CO₂ in aqueous MEA is evaluated using CO₂ microbubbles by monitoring changes in size upon their time-dependent absorption. We find that the average CO₂ absorption rate with NiNPs is accelerated by 34% in the limited mixing condition in the microreactor. This increase is mainly due to NPs’ catalytic CO₂ absorption driven by a Brownian motion. On the other hand, in the high mixing condition in the long serpentine microchannel, the catalytic activity of NiNPs improves the average CO₂ absorption rate further to 54%. This improvement makes it possible to shorten the timescale for reaching CO₂ absorption equilibrium and therefore to reduce the size of the reactors significantly. The test results demonstrate that NiNPs serve as suitable additives in the MEA-based CO₂ absorption system.

在工业后碳捕集工艺中，单乙醇胺（MEA）已主要用作吸收溶剂。但是，这种方法会产生大量的有毒废水，其中包含难以处理的重化学物质，并且也引起了对设施中金属结构的急性腐蚀的担忧。为了减少在碳捕集中使用MEA，这项工作评估了镍纳米颗粒（NiNPs）作为MEA溶剂中可能的添加剂而用于CO ₂捕集的催化性能。我们测试CO ₂在有限和高混合条件下，NiNPs催化的MEA中MEA的吸收速率，可以模拟工业吸收反应器填充塔中的实际捕集过程。为此目的，使用了微反应器和长的蛇形微通道。NiNPs对CO的催化吸收性能₂在水溶液MEA评估使用CO ₂的微泡通过在他们的时间依赖性吸收监测大小的变化。我们发现，在微型反应器的有限混合条件下，NiNPs的平均CO ₂吸收率提高了34％。这种增加主要是由于NP的催化性CO ₂布朗运动驱动的吸收。另一方面，在长蛇形微通道中的高混合条件下，NiNPs的催化活性将平均CO ₂吸收率进一步提高至54％。这种改进使得可以缩短达到CO ₂吸收平衡的时间尺度，从而显着减小反应器的尺寸。测试结果表明，NiNPs在基于MEA的CO ₂吸收系统中可用作合适的添加剂。