Single-atom solutions promote carbon dioxide capture

Single-atom solutions are proposed to promote CO₂ capture for carbon neutralization. Copper, iron, manganese and boron based single-atom DMF solution along with iron and manganese based single-atom ethanol solution are developed scientifically. The DFT simulation and experiment are performed to analyze the system of single-atom solution and CO₂. It is shown that copper, iron and boron single atoms promote the solution to absorb carbon dioxide. Manganese single atom shows little intensification effect for carbon dioxide absorption. More importantly, copper single atom also promotes CO₂ desorption at low temperatures. Based on the interaction energy and desorption energy barrier, it is concluded that copper and boron based single-atom solutions show outstanding CO₂ capture performance. Their CO₂ desorption energy were assessed as 1.65 GJ/t CO₂ and 0.97 GJ/t CO₂, which are 56.58% and 74.47% lower than the conventional amine system.