Advancing sustainable CO2 mitigation: Experimental and computational analysis of thermal carbon chitosan sorbent for automotive exhaust capture

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2025

Abstract

This study investigated the efficiency of thermal carbon chitosan (TCCS) sorbent for CO2 capture from vehicle exhaust emissions within a designed adsorption system. TCCS was synthesized and meticulously characterized using a series of analytical techniques, including Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area analysis, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX), and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). The TCCS adsorbent showed high thermal stability and a heating value (HHV) of 23.5 MJ/kg. Adsorption isotherm study demonstrated that the maximum capacity of CO2 adsorption is 0.084 kg.CO2/kg.TCCS, as well as confirmation of the exothermic nature of the process with an enthalpy change (ΔH) of −26.42 kJ/mol. Kinetics study indicated that the adsorption mechanism was physical in nature, characterized by an activation energy (ED) of 4.27 kJ/mol, which is lower than the threshold of 8 kJ/mol. The experimental breakthrough curve revealed a breakpoint time (tb) of 1280 s, a saturation time (ts) of 2300 s and illustrated that about 70 % of the adsorption bed (Hb) was used during the CO2 adsorption process. To further validate the experimental results, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation was conducted, revealing a strong correlation with the experimental data. The low error values between the experimental and CFD predicted results underscore the reliability of the TCCS-based adsorption system for effective CO2 capture. This research contributes valuable insight into the potential of TCCS as a sustainable adsorbent for mitigating CO2emissions from automotive sources.

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