Carbon dioxide absorbents: does it matter which one you use?

Excerpt

More than 20 years ago, it became apparent that carbon dioxide absorbents had the potential to interact with potent anesthetic agents producing carbon monoxide, Compound A and reducing the concentration of anesthetic agent [1, 2]. This observation led to a reformulation of absorbents to reduce or eliminate the highly reactive strong bases KOH and NaOH in an effort to prevent the interaction with anesthetic vapors. These newer formulations were studied and shown to have limited, if any, potential to produce CO or Compound A, but the penalty was a slightly reduced ability to absorb CO₂ [3]. Since that time there has been very little published on CO₂ absorbents despite the appearance on the market of a variety of formulations. For the practitioner, it can be a challenge to determine the optimal absorbent to select. Fortunately, Hendrickx et al. have provided new data that sheds light on the absorptive capacity of CO₂ absorbent products and also on the challenges of quantifying the performance differences between the various products. …