RESEARCH ARTICLE www.advancedscience.com [EMmim][NTf 2 ]—a Novel Ionic Liquid (IL) in Catalytic CO 2 Capture and ILs’ Applications Xin He, Yangyan Gao, Yunlei Shi, Xiaowen Zhang, Zhiwu Liang, Riguang Zhang, Xingfei Song, Qinghua Lai, Hertanto Adidharma, Armistead G. Russell, Eric G. Eddings, Weiyang Fei, Fangqin Cheng,* Shik Chi Edman Tsang,* Jianji Wang,* and Maohong Fan* Ionic liquids (ILs) have been used for carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) capture, however, which have never been used as catalysts to accelerate CO 2 capture. The record is broken by a uniquely designed IL, [EMmim][NTf 2 ]. The IL can universally catalyze both CO 2 sorption and desorption of all the chemisorption-based technologies. As demonstrated in monoethanolamine (MEA) based CO 2 capture, even with the addition of only 2000 ppm IL catalyst, the rate of CO 2 desorption—the key to reducing the overall CO 2 capture energy consumption or breaking the bottleneck of the state-of-the-art technologies and Paris Agreement implementation—can be increased by 791% at 85 °C, which makes use of low-temperature waste heat and avoids secondary pollution during CO 2 capture feasible. Furthermore, the catalytic CO 2 capture mechanism is experimentally and theoretically revealed. X. He, Y. Gao, X. Zhang, X. Song, Q. Lai, H. Adidharma, M. Fan Departments of Petroleum and Chemical Engineering University of Wyoming Laramie, WY 82071, USA E-mail: mfan@uwyo.edu; mfan3@mail.gatech.edu X. He College of Materials and Chemistry & Chemical Engineering Chengdu University of Technology Chengdu 610059, P. R. China Y.Gao, F. Cheng College of Environmental & Resource Science of Shanxi University Taiyuan 030001, P. R. China E-mail: cfangqin@sxu.edu.cn Y. Shi, J. Wang School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Henan Normal University Xinxiang, Henan 453007, P. R. China E-mail: jwang@htu.cn X. Zhang, Z. Liang College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Hunan University Changsha 410082, P. R. China The ORCID identification number(s) for the author(s) of this article can be found under https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202205352 © 2022 The Authors. Advanced Science published by Wiley-VCH GmbH. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: 10.1002/advs.202205352 1. Introduction Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) capture is critical not only because of its close connection with climate change according to Paris Cli- mate Accord [1–3] but also because of its increasing importance as a material and fuel synthesis resource. [4–6] Thus, CO 2 cap- ture is very important. [7,8] Chemisorption is one of the most important methods for CO 2 capture. [9–11] The fundamental chal- lenge of chemisorption-based technologies is the slow absorption and desorption reac- tion kinetics, especially the latter one, which leads to the need for CO 2 desorption at >100 °C. [12] Consequently, excessive ener- gies are needed to vaporize a large amount of liquid water during CO 2 desorption R. Zhang Key Laboratory of Coal Science and Technology of Ministry of Education and Shanxi Province Taiyuan University of Technology Taiyuan, Shanxi 030024, P. R. China X. Song Key Laboratory on Resources Chemicals and Materials of Ministry of Education Shenyang University of Chemical Technology Shenyang 110142, P. R. China A. G. Russell, M. Fan School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, GA 30332, USA E. G. Eddings Department of Chemical Engineering University of Utah Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA W. Fei State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering Department of Chemical Engineering Tsinghua University Beijing 100084, P. R. China S. C. E. Tsang Department of Chemistry University of Oxford Oxford OX1 3QR, UK E-mail: edman.tsang@chem.ox.ac.uk Adv. Sci. 2023, 10, 2205352 © 2022 The Authors. Advanced Science published by Wiley-VCH GmbH 2205352 (1 of 9)