MEASUREMENTS OF CARBON DIOXIDE SOLUBILITY IN CYRENE

N-Methyl-2-Pyrrolidone (NMP) is one of the most used solvents for CO2 removal from gaseous streams by physical absorption and, recently, it has also been considered as a component of hybrid solvents performing both physical and chemical absorption for possible applications to the capture of CO2 from flue gas streams. However, NMP has some drawbacks and it has been included in the list of ‘Substances of Very High Concern’ according to the European Regulation No. 1907/2006 [1]. For this reason, alternative solvents are being considered. Cyrene (dihydrolevoglucosenone) is a biodegradable, non-mutagenic and non-toxic solvent derived from renewable biomass and it has emerged as a promising bio-based alternative solvent to NMP. Despite its potential, only a limited number of studies have investigated the solubility of CO₂ in Cyrene, with experimental data available exclusively at 313.15 K [2] and at 333.15 K [3]. Such data have been used for the validation of the solubility unit installed at the Process Thermodynamics laboratory (PT lab) of Politecnico di Milano, which will be later used for measurements at additional temperatures relevant to CO₂ removal processes. In the context of the PRIN 2022 project “GREEN-based water-lean SOLvent for CO2 capture” (GREENSOL), funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU, this work presents the measurements that have been collected up to a pressure of 1.602 MPa following the model employed in the literature [4] for data processing. The measurements agree well with the literature values, confirming the reliability of the experimental setup for further investigations under different operating conditions.