Asphalt-Derived High Surface Area Activated Porous Carbons for Carbon Dioxide Capture

Abstract

Research activity toward the development of new sorbents for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture have been increasing quickly. Despite the variety of existing materials with high surface areas and high CO2 uptake performances, the cost of the materials remains a dominant factor in slowing their industrial applications. Here we report preparation and CO2 uptake performance of microporous carbon materials synthesized from asphalt, a very inexpensive carbon source. Carbonization of asphalt with potassium hydroxide (KOH) at high temperatures (>600 °C) yields porous carbon materials (A-PC) with high surface areas of up to 2780 m(2) g(-1) and high CO2 uptake performance of 21 mmol g(-1) or 93 wt % at 30 bar and 25 °C. Furthermore, nitrogen doping and reduction with hydrogen yields active N-doped materials (A-NPC and A-rNPC) containing up to 9.3% nitrogen, making them nucleophilic porous carbons with further increase in the Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface areas up to 2860 m(2) g(-1) for A-NPC and CO2 uptake to 26 mmol g(-1) or 114 wt % at 30 bar and 25 °C for A-rNPC. This is the highest reported CO2 uptake among the family of the activated porous carbonaceous materials. Thus, the porous carbon materials from asphalt have excellent properties for reversibly capturing CO2 at the well-head during the extraction of natural gas, a naturally occurring high pressure source of CO2. Through a pressure swing sorption process, when the asphalt-derived material is returned to 1 bar, the CO2 is released, thereby rendering a reversible capture medium that is highly efficient yet very inexpensive.

Porous carbon derived via KOH activation of a hypercrosslinked porous organic polymer for efficient CO2, CH4, H2 adsorptions and high CO2/N2 selectivity

“…Q stCO2 for our KOH activated carbon lies within 23-27.8 kJ mol À 1 (Fig. S8), which is almost comparable with benzimidazole polymers (26.7 kJ mol À 1 ) [41], Asphalt-derived carbons (20-29 kJ mol À 1 ) [42], but is lower than N-functionalized covalent organic nitridic frameworks (34 kJ mol À 1 ) [43]. Again, although KCOP-M-700 have higher BET surface area and V micro ( Table 1) than KCOP-M-600, but showed lower CO 2 adsorption, which can be explained on the difference in their Q stCO2.…”

Tunable Polyaniline‐Based Porous Carbon with Ultrahigh Surface Area for CO2 Capture at Elevated Pressure

“…It can be seen that the total CO 2 uptake of SU-AC-400 at 30 bar (28.3 mmol g −1 ) is superior to those of the previously reported carbon materials. [10][11][12][23][24][25] Table 2 lists the CO 2 and CH 4 adsorption uptakes and CO 2 /CH 4 selectivities for the SU-AC samples. Table 3 summarizes the textual properties and high-pressure CO 2 capacities of SU-AC-400 in comparison with previously reported carbons.…”

“…[32] A-rNPC 2580 1.09 25.2 21.1 (40 °C) Jalilov et al [24] CPC-700 3242 1.51 25.7 -Ashourirad et al [23] HPC5b2-1100 2734 5.23 27.4 20. 4 Srinivas et al [12] SU [34,35] The significant decrease in Q st with increasing CO 2 loading reveals the heterogeneous nature of the adsorption sites.…”

Facile Carbonization of Microporous Organic Polymers into Hierarchically Porous Carbons Targeted for Effective CO2 Uptake at Low Pressures

“…14 To enhance the CO 2 sorption of porous carbon, various precursors (asphalt, 15 organic polymers 16 and biomass resources 17 ), optimal carbonization processes [18][19] and post-modification strategy 6 have been thoroughly investigated. Major research efforts have been focused on developing high surface area and incorporating basic sites to engineer pore surface of carbon.…”