One-pot carbonization enrichment of nitrogen in microporous carbon spheres for efficient CO2 capture†
Abstract
Nitrogen-enriched porous carbon spheres are synthesized through a one-pot carbonization process by decorating the as-made melamine–formaldehyde spheres with resorcinol and hexamethylenetetramine, exhibiting high surface areas of 518–828 m2 g−1 with a micropore size of 0.5–1.3 nm. Due to the successful incorporation of large amounts of highly dispersed N (4.3–10.8 wt%) into the carbon matrix, the synthesized microporous carbon spheres, having a large amount of narrow micropores (<1.0 nm), show a good capacity to store CO2. At 1 atm, the equilibrium CO2 capture capacities of the obtained microporous carbons are in the range of 4.0–5.4 mmol g−1 at 0 °C and 3.0–4.3 mmol g−1 at 25 °C, revealing their great promise for practical CO2 capture applications. More importantly, the CO2 uptake as large as 2.76 mmol g−1 can be obtained at 75 °C, suggesting the significant promise of the synthesized carbon materials for CO2 capture and separation.
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