Facile preparation of N-doped porous carbon and its CO2 gas adsorption performance

Although carbon material are widely used for gas separation and adsorption due to its well-developed pore structure, their prevalent wide pore size distribution and scarcity of active adsorption sites limit its gas adsorption capacity. Therefore, in this paper, a series of N-doped microporous carbon adsorbent materials were prepared via utilizing cheap starch as the carbon source and the synthesized melamine resin as the N-doped modifier with the assistance of hydrothermal conversion and high temperature activation by KOH.BET test showed that MF@Cs was a typical microporous carbon material with a pore size distribution of 0.3–2 nm, and its most accessible pore size was about 0.6 nm,which benefits the adsorption of CO2 and CH4. MF@C–1–750 porous carbon material present prominent pore structure parameters, with a maximum specific surface area of 2415.9 cm2/g, a total pore volume of 1.36 cm2/g, and a maximum ultramicro pore volume of 0.42 cm2/g at 0.3 ~ 1.0 nm. MF@Cs porous carbon materials show high static adsorption capacity for CO2 and CH4, the adsorption capacity of CO2 of MF@C–1–750 is as high as 6.54 mmol/g at 273 K and 100 kPa, which is attributed to the excellent ultramicro pore volume of carbon materials. MF@Cs porous carbon material is expected to play a huge application potential in the separation and enrichment of CO2 in the future, due to its simple preparation and low cost, excellent specific surface area, outstanding ultrafine pore capacity and high adsorption capacity of CO2 gas.