Enhancing CO2 hydrate formation: Effect of coconut fibers on nucleation kinetics of CO2 hydrates

Producing CO<inf>2</inf> gas hydrates is one of the recent techniques being used to capture CO<inf>2</inf>. In this work, the effect of coconut fibers on kinetics CO<inf>2</inf> hydrate formation has been investigated. Use of coconut fibers was found to reduce the induction time of CO<inf>2</inf> hydrate formation drastically from 106.6 ± 9.5 mins when no coconut fibers were used, to 29.3 ± 9.9 mins when 9 wt% coconut fibers were used. A combination of coconut fibers and tetrahydrofuran was found to yield synergistic effect leading to a reduction in induction time almost by 20 times to 5.5 ± 5.1 mins, and the amount of CO<inf>2</inf> captured was found to be 0.0645 ± 0.0071 moles of CO<inf>2</inf> per mole of water. Coconut fibers provide an enhanced interfacial area to promote heterogeneous nucleation of CO<inf>2</inf> hydrates resulting in a reduction of induction time. The results presented in this work can lead to the development of innovative technologies for the capture of CO<inf>2</inf> using economical and biodegradable material.