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Mineralization of flue gas CO2 with coproduction of valuable magnesium carbonate by means of magnesium chloride

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  • Environmental Science & Technology
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Chinese Science Bulletin

Abstract

CO2 mineralization and utilization is a new area for reducing the CO2 emissions. By reacting with natural mineral or industrial waste, CO2 can be transformed into valuable solid carbonate (such as calcium carbonate or magnesium carbonate) with recovery of some products simultaneously. In this paper, a novel method was proposed to mineralize CO2 by means of magnesium chloride with small energy consumption. In this method, magnesium chloride was firstly transformed into magnesium hydroxide by electrolysis. The formed magnesium hydroxide showed high reactivity to mineralize CO2. In our study, even at low concentration, CO2 can be effectively mineralized by this method, which makes it possible to directly mineralize flue gas CO2, avoiding the expensive process of CO2 capture and purification. Moreover, valuable products such as hydromagnesite and nesquehonite can be recovered by this method. Because of the wide distribution of magnesium chloride in nature, large-scale CO2 mineralization is potential by means of magnesium chloride.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by International Cooperative Research Project of the Ministry of Science and Technology (2012DFA60760), the Natural Science Foundation of China (51120145001, 51254002), the National Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholars (51125017), and the Natural Basic Research Projects of China (2011CB201201, 2010CB226804).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center of CCUS and CO2 Mineralization and Utilization, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Heping Xie, Yufei Wang & Wei Chu

  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. School of Chemical Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Wei Chu

  4. State Key Laboratory of Coal Resources and Safe Mining, China University of Mining Technology, Beijing, 100083, China

    Yang Ju

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  1. Heping Xie
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  2. Yufei Wang
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  3. Wei Chu
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  4. Yang Ju
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Correspondence to Heping Xie.

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Xie, H., Wang, Y., Chu, W. et al. Mineralization of flue gas CO2 with coproduction of valuable magnesium carbonate by means of magnesium chloride. Chin. Sci. Bull. 59, 2882–2889 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0388-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11434-014-0388-1

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