As part of the CO2 Circle Lab, carbon capture represents the first step for the CO2 global management towards the sustainable synthesis of high value-added products through bio-thermo-electrochemical technologies. The facilities in the lab focus on the technical feasibility of CO2 recovery from several gas mixtures (e.g. biogas, exhausts) through:
The test station design replicates a traditional two-column scheme for the removal of CO2 from different gas mixtures (N2, O2/H2, CH4, CO). The rig allows the execution of tests in two modes.
The facility is based on membrane technology and it is used to upgrade biogas (i.e. increasing methane content in natural gas or synthetic natural gas) and as post-combustion capture to sequestrate the CO2 from flue gas. The facility can also be adopted to measure the permeability and selectivity of solid matrices placed in the specifically designed housing. Some parameters can be changed during the test and they are summarized below:
Figure 5 shows the schematic diagram of the test station. A gas mixture fills the storage tank B1 until the operating pressure is reached. Successively, the mixture of gases flows into the housing of the membrane at a constant temperature. The permeate is the gas separated from the mixture able to pass through the membrane to the low-pressure environment while the retentate is the remaining part of the original mix. The mass spectrometer guarantees fast analytical gas composition detection in the permeate and retentate.