Induction Heating-Enhanced ChCl-MEA Solvent Regeneration: Performance and Heat-Transfer Mechanism via Numerical Analysis

Induction heating offers a promising route to intensify CO₂ desorption. Conventionally, ferromagnetic powders are dispersed in the solvent as susceptor materials. In this study, 430 stainless steel mesh coated with a thin layer of copper and directly immersed in the solvent was used to replace such powders. Induction tests show that the coated mesh reaches the target temperature even at low frequency and low excitation current. Desorption experiments were subsequently conducted for various CO₂-rich ChCl-MEA formulations. Under electromagnetic induction, the MCu3 system delivered the best performance: a desorption efficiency of 93.54%, a desorption rate of 0.3302 × 10^-3 g CO₂·g^-1 absorbent·s^-1, and an energy requirement of only 2.33 GJ·t^-1 CO₂. Compared with the uncatalyzed system under conventional conduction heating, this exceptionally high desorption rate benefits from the stainless-steel mesh's highly efficient magnetothermal effect, the proton-transfer active sites that the surface copper layer offers for chemical catalysis, and-thanks to copper's high thermal conductivity-the noticeably more uniform heat transfer achieved under induction heating. This magnetothermal-catalytic strategy opens a scalable, low-energy pathway for absorbent regeneration in industrial CO₂ capture processes.