Effect of cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide concentration on structure, morphology and carbon dioxide adsorption capacity of calcium hydroxide based sorbents

Carbonation conversions of (a) CC, (b) CH-2, (c) CH-4, (d) CH-6, (e) CH-8 precursor adsorbents for 10 cycles. •Ca(OH)2 precursor was synthesized using precipitation method.•The effect of CTAB concentration on the synthesis of Ca(OH)2 was studied.•The sorbent synthesized using 0.8M of CTAB showed good CO2 adsorption capacity.•The cyclic stability of Ca(OH)2 was increased with increase of CTAB concentration. Calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2) has been proposed as an important material for industrial, architectural, and environmental applications. In this study, calcium acetate was used as a precursor and cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) was used as a surfactant to synthesize Ca(OH)2 based adsorbents for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture. The effect of CTAB concentration (0.2–0.8M) on the structure, morphology and CO2 adsorption performance of Ca(OH)2 was studied in detail. The synthesized samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), BET surfaced area and thermogravimetry-differential thermal analysis (TG–DTA) techniques. The phase purity, crystallite size, Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area and CO2 adsorption performance of Ca(OH)2 precursor adsorbents were significantly increased when the concentration of CTAB was increased. XRD results showed that pure Ca(OH)2 phase was obtained at the CTAB concentration of 0.8M. TGA results exhibited that 0.8M of CTAB-assisted Ca(OH)2 precursor adsorbent possessed a residual carbonation conversion of ∼56% after 10 cycles.