A Computational Study of the Heats of Reaction of Substituted Monoethanolamine with CO2

作者:Xie Hong Bin; Johnson J Karl; Perry Robert J; Genovese Sarah; Wood Benjamin R
来源:Journal of Physical Chemistry A, 2011, 115(3): 342-350.
DOI:10.1021/jp1081627

摘要

Various amines have been considered as materials for chemical capture of CO2 through liquid-phase reactions to form either carbamate or carbamic acid products. One of the main challenges in these CO2-amine reactions lies in tuning the heat of reaction to achieve the correct balance between the extent of reaction and the energy cost for regeneration. In this work, we use a computational approach to study the effect of substitution on the heats of reaction of monoethanolamine (MEA). We use ab initio methods at the MP2/aug-cc-pVDZ level, coupled with geometries generated from B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p) density functional theory along with the conductor-like polarizable continuum model to compute the heats of reaction. We consider two possible reaction products: carbamate, having a 2:1 amine:CO2 reaction stoichiometry, and carbamic acid, having a 1:1 stoichiometry. We have considered CH3, NH2, OH, OCH3, and F substitution groups at both the alpha- and beta-carbon positions of MEA. We have experimentally measured heats of reaction for MEA and both alpha- and beta-CH3-substituted MEA to test the predictions of our model. We find quantitative agreement between the predictions and experiments. We have also computed the relative basicities of the substituted amines and found that the heats of reaction for both carbamate and carbamic acid products are linearly correlated with the computed relative basicities. Weaker basicities result in less exothermic heats of reaction. Heats of reaction for carbamates are much more sensitive to changes in basicity than those for carbamic acids. This leads to a crossover in the heat of reaction so that carbamic acid formation becomes thermodynamically favored over carbamate formation for the weakest basicities. This provides a method for tuning the reaction stoichiometry from 2:1 to 1:1.

  • 出版日期2011-1-27