Thermal management of gyroid-packed temperature and pressure swing adsorption for flue gas CO2 capture

• Gyroid shaped material helps in thermal management in CO 2 capture applications. • High purity CO 2 can be obtained (99%) with recovery over 90%. • Combination of selective adsorbents and thermal conductive media enhances desorption rate. Traditional packed-bed adsorption columns suffer from poor thermal management due to low effective thermal conductivity, which leads to a reduced efficiency during cyclic operation. Gyroid structures provide a promising alternative to boost efficiency, providing key advantages such as lower pressure drop and enhanced heat transfer. These benefits stem from the high surface area of the gyroid framework and the improved connectivity of the gas flow pathways, which facilitate efficient mass and heat transfer. The novelty of this study is to investigate the efficiency of a composite structure of a highly conductive metallic gyroid framework with a thin adsorbent coating to significantly enhance heat transfer in adsorption columns. We present a three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of gyroid-based adsorption columns, where an inert matrix with a gyroid shape is coated with KAUST-7 adsorbent for CO 2 capture from flue gases. By employing a thermally conducting metal, such as stainless steel, for the internal matrix of the gyroid structure, heat transfer within the TPSA process is enhanced by several orders of magnitude. The 3D gyroid model is translated to a one-dimensional (1D) model to reduce computational effort and study the TPSA performance. Compared to a conventional packed adsorption column operated under identical conditions, the optimized gyroid configuration achieves approximately 100% increase in productivity and about 27% improvement in CO 2 recovery, while maintaining high product purity greater than 99%. These results demonstrate the potential of adsorption columns with gyroid packings a plausible solution for next-generation carbon capture technologies.