Biowaste utilization
as a carbon source and its transformation
into porous carbons have been of great interest to promote environmental
remediation owing to biowaste’s cost-effectiveness and useful
physicochemical properties. In this work, crude glycerol (CG) residue
from waste cooking oil transesterification was employed to fabricate
mesoporous crude glycerol-based porous carbons (mCGPCs) using mesoporous silica (KIT-6) as a template. The obtained mCGPCs were characterized and compared to commercial activated
carbon (AC) and CMK-8, a carbon material prepared using sucrose. The
study aimed to evaluate the potential of mCGPC as
a CO2 adsorbent and demonstrated its superior adsorption
capacity compared to AC and comparable to CMK-8. The X-ray diffraction
(XRD) and Raman results clearly depicted the structure of carbon nature
with (002) and (100) planes and defect (D) and graphitic (G) bands,
respectively. The specific surface area, pore volume, and pore diameter
values confirmed the mesoporosity of mCGPC materials.
The transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images also clearly revealed
the porous nature with the ordered mesopore structure. The mCGPCs, CMK-8, and AC materials were used as CO2 adsorbents under optimized conditions. The mCGPC
adsorption capacity (1.045 mmol/g) is superior to that of AC (0.689
mmol/g) and still comparable to that of CMK-8 (1.8 mmol/g). The thermodynamic
analyses of the adsorption phenomena are also carried out. This work
demonstrates the successful synthesis of a mesoporous carbon material
using a biowaste (CG) and its application as a CO2 adsorbent.