Activated carbon materials with a rich surface chemistry prepared from L-cysteine amino acid

Abstract

A series of activated carbon materials have been successfully prepared from a non-essential amino acid, such as L-cysteine. The synthesized carbons combine a widely developed porous structure (BET surface area up to 1000 m2/g) and a rich surface chemistry (mainly oxygen, nitrogen and sulphur functionalities). These surface functional groups are relatively stable even after a high temperature thermal treatment (O>N∼S). Experimental results show that these samples with a rich surface chemistry exhibit a significant improvement in their hydrophilic character. Although the role of the surface functional groups is less pronounced for the adsorption of non-polar molecules such as CO2, CH4 and C2H4, their adsorption at atmospheric pressure is to some extend conditioned by the characteristics of the adsorbent-adsorbate interactions. The synthesized carbons exhibit an excellent adsorption performance for CO2 (up to 3 mmol/g at 0 °C). Furthermore, samples with a low activation degree exhibit molecular sieving properties with very promising CO2/CH4 (up to 4.5) and C2H4/CH4 (up to 6) selectivity ratios. These results anticipate that non-essential amino acids are a versatile platform to obtain carbon materials combining a tailored porous structure and rich multifunctional surface chemistry and with potential application for gas adsorption/separation processes.