Tuning porosity of coal-derived activated carbons for CO<sub>2</sub> adsorption

doi:10.1007/s11705-022-2155-1

Front. Chem. Sci. Eng.

2022, Vol. 16

Issue (9) : 1345-1354 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11705-022-2155-1

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Tuning porosity of coal-derived activated carbons for CO₂ adsorption

Zhipeng Qie^1,², Lijie Wang³, Fei Sun¹(

), Huan Xiang⁴, Hua Wang¹, Jihui Gao¹, Guangbo Zhao¹, Xiaolei Fan²

¹. School of Energy Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China
². Department of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
³. China Datang Corporation Renewable Energy Science and Technology Research Institute, Beijing 100052, China
⁴. Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute (EBRI), Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET, UK

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Abstract

A simple method was developed to tune the porosity of coal-derived activated carbons, which provided a model adsorbent system to investigate the volumetric CO₂ adsorption performance. Specifically, the method involved the variation of the activation temperature in a K₂CO₃ induced chemical activation process which could yield activated carbons with defined microporous (< 2 nm, including ultra-microporous < 1 nm) and meso-micro-porous structures. CO₂ adsorption isotherms revealed that the microporous activated carbon has the highest measured CO₂ adsorption capacity (6.0 mmol∙g^–1 at 0 °C and 4.1 mmol∙g^–1 at 25 °C), whilst ultra-microporous activated carbon with a high packing density exhibited the highest normalized capacity with respect to packing volume (1.8 mmol∙cm⁻³ at 0 °C and 1.3 mmol∙cm^–3 at 25 °C), which is significant. Both experimental correlation analysis and molecular dynamics simulation demonstrated that (i) volumetric CO₂ adsorption capacity is directly proportional to the ultra-micropore volume, and (ii) an increase in micropore sizes is beneficial to improve the volumetric capacity, but may lead a low CO₂ adsorption density and thus low pore space utilization efficiency. The adsorption experiments on the activated carbons established the criterion for designing CO₂ adsorbents with high volumetric adsorption capacity.

Keywords coal-derived activated carbons porosity CO₂ adsorption molecular dynamics

Corresponding Author(s): Fei Sun

About author:

Tongcan Cui and Yizhe Hou contributed equally to this work.

Online First Date: 24 April 2022 Issue Date: 20 September 2022

Cite this article:

Zhipeng Qie,Lijie Wang,Fei Sun, et al. Tuning porosity of coal-derived activated carbons for CO₂ adsorption[J]. Front. Chem. Sci. Eng., 2022, 16(9): 1345-1354.

URL:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fcse/EN/10.1007/s11705-022-2155-1
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fcse/EN/Y2022/V16/I9/1345

Fig.1 Schematic K₂CO₃ activation of the coal precursor to prepare ACs, and the associated pore formation process in the ACs.

Tab.1 Textural properties of the ACs under investigation

Fig.2 (a) N₂ adsorption/desorption isotherms and (b) DFT pore size distribution of the ACs.

Fig.3 (a) SEM and (b) TEM images of AC-600; (c) SEM and (d) TEM images of AC-700; (e) SEM and (f) TEM images of AC-800; (g) SEM and (h) TEM images of AC-900; (i) Raman spectra of the ACs; (j) XRD patterns of the ACs.

Fig.4 (a) CO₂ adsorption isotherms of the ACs measured at 0 °C; (b) photos of the packing patterns of the ACs at ca. 150 mg; (c) packing density (d_packing) corrected volumetric CO₂ adsorption capacities (q_cv,d) of the ACs at 0 °C and 1 bar; (d) q–V_total correlation of the ACs at 0 °C and 1 bar; (e) q_sv,Vt–(V_{(≤1 nm)}/V_total) correlation of the ACs at 0 °C; (f) comparison of q_sv,Vt and q_sv,BET values of different biomass/coal-derived ACs with AC-600 for CO₂ adsorption at 0 °C.

Tab.2 CO₂ adsorption capacities at 0 °C of the ACs under investigation

Fig.5 (a) CO₂ adsorption on AC models of different effective pore sizes; (b) density profiles of CO₂ molecules along the pores with pore diameters ranging from 0.2 to 3.5 nm; (c) number density and percentage of CO₂ molecules adsorbed inside the slit pore; (d) self-diffusion coefficients of CO₂ in pores with different effective sizes.

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