Facile Approach to the Fabrication of Highly Selective CuCl-Impregnated θ-Al₂O₃ Adsorbent for Enhanced CO Performance

We have developed a facile and sustainable method to produce a novel θ-Al₂O₃-supported CuCl adsorbent through impregnation methods using CuCl₂ as the precursor. In an easy two-step process, θ-Al₂O₃ was impregnated with a known concentration of CuCl₂ solutions, and the precursor was calcined to prepare CuCl oversupport. The developed novel θ-Al₂O₃-supported CuCl adsorbent was compared with an adsorbent prepared through the conventional method using CuCl salt. The adsorbents were characterized via X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA) and temperature-programmed reduction (H₂-TPR). Overall, the adsorbent indicates a high CO adsorption capacity, high CO/CO₂ and CO/N₂ selectivity, and remarkable reusability performance. This process is operated at ambient temperature, which minimizes operation costs in CO separation processes. In addition, these results indicate that the systematic evaluation of alumina-supported CuCl adsorbent can provide significant insight for designing a realistic PSA process for selective CO separation processes.