Nitrogen-enriched and hierarchically porous carbon macro-spheres-ideal for large-scale CO2 capture

Zhu, Bingjun; Li, Kaixi; Liu, Jingjing; Liu, Hao; Sun, Cheng-Gong; Snape, Colin E.; Guo, Zhengxiao

Abstract

A facile and efficient “spheridization” method is developed to produce nitrogen-enriched hierarchically porous carbon spheres of millimeters in diameter, with intricate micro-, meso- and macro-structural features. Such spheres not only show exceptional working capacity for CO2 sorption, but also satisfy practical requirements for dynamic flow in post-combustion CO2 capture. Those were achieved using co-polymerized acrylonitrile and acrylamide as the N-enriched carbon precursor, a solvent-exchange process to create hierarchically porous macro-sphere preforms, oxidization to induce cyclization of the polymer chains, and carbonization with concurrent chemical activation by KOH. The resulting carbon spheres show a relatively high CO2 uptake of 16.7 wt% under 1 bar of CO2 and, particularly, an exceptional uptake of 9.3 wt% under a CO2 partial pressure of 0.15 bar at 25 °C. Subsequent structural and chemical analyses suggest that the outstanding properties are due to highly developed microporous structures and the relatively high pyridinic nitrogen content inherited from the co-polymer precursor, incorporated within the hierarchical porous structures.

Citation

Zhu, B., Li, K., Liu, J., Liu, H., Sun, C.-G., Snape, C. E., & Guo, Z. (2014). Nitrogen-enriched and hierarchically porous carbon macro-spheres-ideal for large-scale CO2 capture. Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2(15), https://doi.org/10.1039/c4ta00438h

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 25, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Feb 26, 2014
• Publication Date: Apr 21, 2014
• Deposit Date: Aug 2, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 15, 2019
• Print ISSN: 2050-7488
• Electronic ISSN: 2050-7496
• Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 15
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/c4ta00438h
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1124686
• Publisher URL: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2014/TA/C4TA00438H#!divAbstract
• Related Public URLs: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84896450693&doi=10.1039%2fc4ta00438h&partnerID=40&md5=a19994f93bcef2094e0248c84fa7d2f3
• Contract Date: Feb 15, 2019