Clathrate Hydrate Capture of CO2 from Simulated Flue Gas with Cyclopentane/Water Emulsion

Capture of CO2 by hydrate is one of the attractive technologies for reducing greenhouse effect. The primary challenges are the large energy consumption, low hydrate formation rate and separation efficiency. This work presents a new method for capture of CO2 from simulated flue gas [CO2(16.60%, by mole)/N2 binary mixture] by formation of cyclopentane (CP) hydrates at initial temperature of 8.1 °C with the feed pressures from 2.49 to 3.95 MPa. The effect of cyclopentane and cyclopentane/water emulsion on the hydrate formation rate and CO2 separation efficiency was studied in a 1000 ml stirred reactor. The results showed the hydrate formation rate could be increased remarkably with cyclopentane/water emulsion. CO2 could be enriched to 43.97% (by mole) and 35.29% (by mole) from simulated flue gas with cyclopentane and cyclopentane/water (O/W) emulsion, respectively, by one stage hydrate separation under low feed pressure. CO2 separation factor with cyclopentane was 6.18, higher than that with cyclopentane/water emulsion (4.01), in the range of the feed pressure. The results demonstrated that cyclopentane/water emulsion is a good additive for efficient hydrate capture of CO2.