We quantitatively investigate the influence of the NaCl electrolyte concentration on the adsorptive and energetic characteristics of supercapacitive swing adsorption (SSA) for the separation of CO2 from a simulated flue gas mixture containing 15% CO2 and 85% N2. The investigated concentrations were that of deionized water, 0.010, 0.10, 1.0, 3.0, and 5.0 M NaCl. We find that the energetic metrics strongly improve with the increasing NaCl concentration, whereas the adsorptive metrics improve by a comparatively small degree. The CO2 adsorption capacity increases up to 1.0 M NaCl and then remains constant. The adsorption rate remains near constant for all concentrations, except that it is somewhat smaller for deionized water. The charge efficiency also remains near constant for all experiments with 30 min potentiostatic holding steps but near doubles for pure water when the potential holding step is doubled, because the chemical adsorption equilibrium is reached only after 60 min. The results can be most satisfactorily explained by assuming that both ionic and nonionic adsorption mechanisms contribute to the SSA effect.
Keywords: CO adsorption; CO separation; electroadsorption; electrolyte concentration; mechanism; porous carbon; supercapacitive swing adsorption.