Abstract The absorption kinetics of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) into amino acid promoted potassium carbonate (K 2 CO 3 ) solutions has been studied using a wetted-wall column. Experiments were conducted under conditions resembling those found at industrial CO 2 capture plants including concentrations up to 2.0 M and temperatures from 40 to 82 °C. Results presented here show that the addition of 1.0 M glycine, sarcosine and proline accelerates the overall rate of absorption of CO 2 into a 30 wt% K 2 CO 3 solvent by a factor of 22, 45 and 14, respectively, at 60 °C. The Arrhenius expressions for the reaction between CO 2 and aforementioned amino acids are k 2-Gly [M −1 s −1 ] = 1.22 × 10 12 exp(−5434/ T [K]), k 2-Sar [M −1 s −1 ] = 6.24 × 10 10 exp(−1699/ T [K]) and k 2-Pro [M −1 s −1 ] = 1.02 × 10 11 exp(−2168/ T [K]) where the activation energies are 45.2 kJ mol −1 , 14.1 kJ mol −1 and 18.0 kJ mol −1 , respectively. The reaction order with respect to glycine is found to be 1, while the reaction order with respect to sarcosine and proline is observed to be in the range of 1.3–1.6 and 1.2–1.3, respectively.