The Effect of Ultrasonic Treatment on the Formation of Zeolite-T and Its CO2 Adsorption Characteristic

Carbon dioxide is the fourth most abundant gas in the atmosphere which contributes to global warming. It has become necessary to find a way for CO2 management. In addition, removal of carbon dioxide in natural gas stream is an essential process because it can reduce the energy content and heating value of the gas and also corrodes pipelines and storage system. Some of the strategies have been developed to overcome this problem. As one of those technologies, adsorption is the most preferable methods used due to its energy and cost efficiency. Research presented that T-type zeolite has great potential in CO2 adsorption as it has high selectivity at either very low pressure or concentration. However, the synthesizing process requires long duration in crystallization step. Besides, the reduction of particle size is also expected in order to enhance the performance of CO2 adsorption. Thus, this project focuses on synthesizing of zeolite-T by using ultrasonic pretreatment prior to hydrothermal method. The synthesis parameters including ultrasonic pre-treatment time and crytallization duration were studied. The influence of those parameters on the particle size and CO2 adsorption capability were investigated. The resulting zeolite-T were characterized using several characterization methods such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Fourier transfer infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). Also, the CO2 adsorption capacity of the resulting zeolite-T were determined.