Achieving
effective and reversible capture of ammonia (NH3) is an
important task in the chemical industry, to avoid the air
pollution potentially induced by NH3 emission, and recycle
the NH3 resource for value-added productions. In this work,
deep eutectic solvents (DESs) comprising ethylamine hydrochloride
(EaCl) and glycerol (Gly) were designed as the media for NH3 absorption, by making use of the protic ionic nature of EaCl and
multiple hydroxyl groups in Gly, which enable strong hydrogen-bonding
interaction with NH3. The absorption amounts of NH3 in prepared EaCl+Gly mixtures at various temperatures and
pressures were experimentally measured. It is found that the NH3 capacities of EaCl+Gly mixtures are quite impressive, with
the highest value of 9.631 mol/kg at 298.2 K and 106.7 kPa, surpassing
those of most absorbents/adsorbents previously reported. The absorption
of NH3 in EaCl+Gly mixtures is also highly reversible,
with almost negligible decrease in NH3 capacities during
absorption–desorption cycles. The mechanism for interaction
between EaCl+Gly and NH3 was validated by spectroscopic
characterizations. Furthermore, the NH3 solubility data
were fitted by the Krichevsky–Kasarnovsky equation to obtain
the Henry’s constants of NH3 in EaCl+Gly mixtures,
and estimate the enthalpy changes, Gibbs free energy changes and entropy
changes, to evaluate the thermodynamic parameters of NH3 absorption process.