Autores: Liliana Margarita García Rojas, Carlos Alberto Huerta-Aguilar, Maria Teresa Orta-Ledesma, Rodolfo Sosa-Echeverria*, PandiyanThangarasu

* Ciencias Ambientales | Contaminación Ambiental

Abstract

he CO₂ content in the air has increased considerably in recent years, causing climate change by increasing the average global temperature. The present work deals with the capture of CO₂ by ZnO NPs coated with benzimidazole-based ionic liquid (IL@ZnO), showing that it is capable of CO₂ capturing efficiently (80%–90%) at room temperature. The performance of the sample in the CO₂ adsorption was analyzed analytically. Thermal gravimetric analysis indicates the interaction of IL@ZnO (surface layer, < 0.5 nm) with CO₂ and H₂O. The amount of CO₂ adsorbed by IL@ZnO (d = 670 nm) was measured by weight loss experiments, and also by infrared spectra (IR 2000∼1200 cm⁻¹), where an increase of the peak intensity (1640 and 1430 cm⁻¹) corresponding to CO₂ was observed. With Density Functional Theory (DFT), the interaction between CO₂ and IL, ZnO, or IL@ZnO was studied, showing that IL coating on ZnO plays a key factor in the adsorption to yield IL@ZnO/CO₂ as a more stable adduct than the others, performing as an excellent CO₂ capture.