Hierarchical ordered mesoporous carbon from phloroglucinol-glyoxal and its application in capacitive deionization of brackish water

Abstract

Templated carbon materials have recently received tremendous attention due to energy storage and separations applications. Hierarchical structures are ideal for increased mass-transport throughout the carbon material. A new ordered mesoporous carbon material has been developed using glyoxal which exhibits a hierarchical structure with pore sizes up to 200 nm. The hierarchical structure arises from the cross linking reagent and not from the standard spinodal decomposition of a secondary solvent. The carbon material was studied for potential application as a capacitive deionization (CDI) electrode for brackish water. Results indicate that the hierarchical structure provides a pathway for faster adsorption kinetics when compared to standard resorcinol-formaldehyde CDI electrodes.

Asymmetric capacitive deionization utilizing nitric acid treated activated carbon fiber as the cathode

“…Carbon aerogels [4][5][6], materials based on activated carbon [7][8][9][10][11], carbide derived carbon [12,13], mesoporous carbon [14][15][16], carbon nanotubes [17,18], graphene [19][20][21], and hybrid materials [22][23][24][25][26][27] have been widely studied as electrode materials of CDI cells.…”

Sponge-like carbon thin films: The dealloying concept applied to copper/carbon nanocomposite

“…The high specific surface area of this kind of material confers them exceptional properties such as super-hydrophobicity [1,2], enhanced catalysis activity [3][4][5][6], and very selective filtering ability [7,8]. Various materials were used to synthesize nanoporous structures including metals (e.g., Au [6,[9][10][11][12][13][14], Pt [15][16][17][18], and Ag [19,20]), oxides (e.g., TiO 2 [21][22][23] and SiO 2 [24,25]) and carbon [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. In general, the material forming the skeleton of the nanoporous structure is selected according to the aimed application.…”

Recent progress in soft-templating of porous carbon materials

“…They replaced formaldehyde with glyoxal (C 2 H 2 O 2 ). Hence, glyoxal, phloroglucinol and F127 were mixed in a mixture of ethanol and water, cross-linked at 100 C and then calcined at 850 C. 75 Ordered mesoporous carbons with macropores of an average size of 200 nm were derived, featuring also F127-templated mesopores of 8 nm in diameter. Although the occurrence of macropores was attributed to the use of glyoxal as the cross-linker, the underlying mechanism of macropore formation has not been revealed so far.…”