Advancements in adsorption based carbon dioxide capture technologies- A comprehensive review

The significant increase in energy consumption has facilitated a rapid increase in offensive greenhouse gas (GHG) and CO₂ emissions. The consequences of such emissions are one of the most pivotal concerns of environmental scientists. To protect the environment, they are conducting the necessary research to protect the environment from the greenhouse effect. Among the different sources of CO₂ emission, power plants contribute the largest amount of CO₂ and as the number of power plants around the world is rising gradually due to increasing energy demand, the amount of CO₂ emission is also rising subsequently. Researchers have developed different potential technologies to capture post-combustion CO₂ capture from powerplants among which membrane-based, cryogenic, absorption and adsorption-based CO₂ processes have gained much attention due to their applicability at the industrial level. In this work, adsorption-based CO₂ technologies are comprehensively reviewed and discussed to understand the recent advancements in different adsorption technologies and several adsorbent materials. Researchers and scientists have developed and advanced different adsorption technologies including vacuum swing adsorption, temperature swing adsorption, pressure swing adsorption, and electric swing adsorption, etc. To further improve the CO₂ adsorption capacity with a compact CO₂ adsorption unit, researchers have integrated different adsorption technologies to investigate their performance, such as temperature vacuum swing adsorption, pressure vacuum swing adsorption, electric temperature pressure swing adsorption, etc. Different adsorbent materials have been tested to evaluate their applicability for CO₂ adsorption and among these adsorbents, advanced carbonaceous, non-carbonaceous, polymeric, and nanomaterials have achieved much attention due to their suitable characteristics that are required for adsorbing CO₂. Researchers have reported that higher CO₂ adsorption capacity can be achieved by integrating different adsorption technologies and employing suitable adsorbent material for that system. This comprehensive review also provides future directions that may assist researchers in developing novel adsorbent materials and gaining a proper understanding of the selection criteria for effective CO₂ adsorption processes with suitable adsorbents.