Chemical and Molecular Descriptors for the Reactivity of Amines with CO{sub 2}

Amine-based solvents are likely to play an important role in CO{sub 2} capture applications in the future, and the identification of amines with superior performance will facilitate their use in CO{sub 2} capture. While some improvements in performance will be achieved through process modifications, modifying the CO{sub 2} capture performance of an amine also implies in part an ability to modify the reactions between the amine and CO{sub 2} through development of new functionalized amines. We present a computational study of trends in the reactions between CO{sub 2} and functionalized amines with a focus on identifying molecular descriptors that determine trends in reactivity. We examine the formation of bicarbonate and carbamate species on three classes of functionalized amines: alkylamines, alkanolamines, and fluorinated alkylamines including primary, secondary and tertiary amines in each class. These functional groups span electron-withdrawing to donating behavior, hydrogen-bonding, extent of functionalization, and proximity effects of the functional groups. Electron withdrawing groups tend to destabilize CO{sub 2} reaction products, whereas electron-donating groups tend to stabilize CO{sub 2} reaction products. Hydrogen bonding stabilizes CO{sub 2} reaction products. Electronic structure descriptors based on electronegativity were found to describe trends in the bicarbonate formation energy. A chemical correlation was observed between the carbamate formation energy and the carbamic acid formation energy. The local softness on the reacting N in the amine was found to partially explain trends carbamic acid formation energy.