Design of hierarchically porous carbon frameworks for enhanced CO2 capture performance

Abstract

To reduce the environmental impact of CO2, CO2 capture has become an area of research interest. Hierarchically porous materials have been certified as efficiency CO2 capture adsorbents. This work is aimed to construct hierarchically porous carbon frameworks (CPI-TPUs) with enhanced CO2 capture performance. CPI-TPUs are derived from polyimide (PI)/thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) composite aerogels (PI-TPUs) with mesopores and macropores. Accordingly, the obtained CPI-TPU2 exhibits an improved CO2 uptake capacity (2.21 mmol/g, 298 K) compared to the pure CPI and PI-TPUs due to the synergistic effect of hierarchically pores, higher specific area and electron-rich heteroatoms. Specially, CPI-TPUs with pore volume ratio of mesopores/macropores to total pores in a range of 6–21 show high CO2 uptake performance. These CPI-TPUs with high CO2 adsorption capacities and suitable isosteric adsorption heats (Qst) are promising CO2 adsorbents.