Mixed Diethanolamine and Polyethyleneimine with Enhanced CO2 Capture Capacity from Air

Supported polyethyleneimine (PEI) adsorbent is one of the most promising commercial direct air capture (DAC) adsorbents with a long research history since 2002. Although great efforts have been input, there are still limited improvements for this material in its CO2 capacity and adsorption kinetics under ultradilute conditions. Supported PEI also suffers significantly reduced adsorption capacities when working at sub‐ambient temperatures. This study reports that mixing diethanolamine (DEA) into supported PEI can increase 46% and 176% of pseudoequilibrium CO2 capacities at DAC conditions compared to the supported PEI and DEA, respectively. The mixed DEA/PEI functionalized adsorbents maintain the adsorption capacity at sub‐ambient temperatures of −5 to 25 °C. In comparison, a 55% reduction of CO2 capacity is observed for supported PEI when the operating temperature decreases from 25 to −5 °C. In addition, the supported mixed DEA/PEI with a ratio of 1:1 also shows fast desorption kinetics at temperatures as low as 70 °C, resulting in maintaining high thermal and chemical stability over 50 DAC cycles with a high average CO2 working capacity of 1.29 mmol g−1. These findings suggest that the concept of “mixed amine”, widely studied in the solvent system, is also practical to supported amine for DAC applications. Diethanolamine (DEA) incorporation is used to enhance the performance of supported polyethyleneimine (PEI) adsorbent for direct air capture. Supported mixed DEA/PEI‐functionalized adsorbents exhibit up to 46% enhanced CO2 capacity, over 100% improved amine efficiency, excellent adsorption at sub‐ambient temperatures, fast desorption kinetics at 70 °C, and high thermal and chemical stability over multiple cycles, compared to the single PEI‐loaded sample.