Design And Development Of Mesoporous RGO@K-MgO Composite For High Temperature CO2 Capture With Enhanced Uptake And Kinetics

Abstract

CO2 capture remains crucial for reducing emissions from hard-to-decarbonize industries such as cement and steel from where flue gases are typically released at elevated temperatures. This necessitates the development of thermally stable sorbents that can rapidly and selectively capture CO2. In this study, we report a mesoporous rGO@K20-MgO composite sorbent, synthesized by incorporating potassium (K)-doped MgO nanoparticles into a reduced graphene oxide (rGO) framework. Structural and textural analyses confirmed that K doping introduced abundant surface basic sites and rGO preserved mesoporosity (2–21 nm) and suppressed particle agglomeration. The sorbent with optimum composition achieved a CO2 uptake capacity of 5.16 mmol/g at 150 °C. This represented a 58% improvement over pristine meso-MgO, and nearly doubled the adsorption rate with decent cyclic stability. Breakthrough experiments showed that increasing the column pressure to 10 bar partially restored the dynamic CO2 capacity under multicomponent CO2/N2/NO/SO2 feed mixture. Overall, these results demonstrate that the composite sorbent maintained appreciable CO2 uptake at high temperature and pressure and in the presence of impurities, thus highlighting its potential for practical point-source CO2 capture.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Comments

National Science Foundation, Grant NSF ECO-CBET-2442910

Keywords and Phrases

Co-precipitation; CO2 capture; Composite adsorbents; High temperature; Magnesium oxide; Reduced GO

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

1385-8947

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2026 Elsevier, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Nov 2026

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