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CO2 mineralization of natural wollastonite into porous silica and CaCO3 powders promoted via membrane electrolysis

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Abstract

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, whose emissions threaten the existence of human beings. Its inherently safe sequestration can be performed via CO2 mineralization, which is relatively slow under natural conditions. In this work, an energy-saving membrane electrolysis technique was proposed for accelerating the CO2 mineralization of wollastonite into SiO2 and CaCO3 products. The electrolysis process involved splitting NH4Cl into HCl and NH3·H2O via hydrogen oxidation and water reduction at the anode and cathode of the electrolytic system, respectively. In contrast to the chlor-alkali electrolysis, this method did not involve Cl− oxidation and the standard potential of the anode was reduced. Additionally, NH4Cl was used as the electrolyte instead of NaCl; as a result, the generation of NH3·H2O instead of NaOH occurred in the catholyte and the cathodic pH dramatically decreased, thus reducing the cathodic potential for hydrogen evolution. The observed changes led to a 73.5% decrease in the energy consumption. Moreover, after the process of CO2 mineralization was optimized, SiO2 with a specific surface area of 221.8 m2 g−1 and CaCO3 with a purity of 99.9% were obtained.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51254002 and 21336004) and National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2013BAC12B03).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Chemical Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Heping Xie, Fuhuan Wang, Tao Liu, Yifan Wu & Bin Liang

  2. Key Laboratory of Energy Engineering Safety and Mechanics on Disasters, The Ministry of Education, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Heping Xie & Yufei Wang

  3. Centre of CCUS and CO2 Mineralization and Utilization, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Fuhuan Wang, Yufei Wang, Tao Liu, Yifan Wu & Bin Liang

Authors
  1. Heping Xie
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  2. Fuhuan Wang
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  3. Yufei Wang
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  4. Tao Liu
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  5. Yifan Wu
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  6. Bin Liang
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Correspondence to Fuhuan Wang.

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The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Additional information

This article is part of a Topical Collection in Environmental Earth Sciences on ‘Subsurface Energy Storage II,’ guest-edited by Zhonghe Pang, Yanlong Kong, Haibing Shao, and Olaf Kolditz.

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Xie, H., Wang, F., Wang, Y. et al. CO2 mineralization of natural wollastonite into porous silica and CaCO3 powders promoted via membrane electrolysis. Environ Earth Sci 77, 149 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-018-7330-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-018-7330-9

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