Accelerated carbonation: an innovative method for carbon dioxide sequestration from alkaline solid wastes

The scope of this thesis is the study of the quantity of CO2 that different alkaline residues (Portland cement residues, foundry sands, clayey silts, and fly ashes) can absorb inside them through a particular reaction called accelerated carbonation. This evaluation has been carried out by analyzing different samples, directly in the laboratory, under controlled operative conditions. Thus, the study has been divided into three parts: a first introduction that reports the general aspects of carbonation, starting from its advantageous and disadvantageous characteristics and finishing with the chemistry of the process and the description of the methods that can be used to measure the CO2 absorption, a second part which is the section containing all the experimental activities performed, and, finally, a third fraction reporting all the graphs, tables, and data used in the thesis. In particular, the second part of the work includes: a critical review realized by analyzing many papers based on accelerated carbonation, which have been selected from the literature to have good and complete knowledge about the process and, above all, of the results (gCO2_ABSORBED/kgSORBENT) that can be found using different materials with different operative conditions, the experimental design used for the analysis, the procedures followed for the process, and all the chemical analyses performed at the end of the carbonation. In the end, the experimental results, in terms of carbon dioxide sequestration, have been explained and compared with the ones coming from the literature analysis.