Imidazole-based hyper-cross-linked polymers derived porous carbons for CO2 capture

Abstract

Abstract N-doped porous carbons (NPCs) are promising adsorbents for CO2 capture and sequestration. Herein a series of NPCs was easily prepared from imidazole-based hyper-cross-linked polymers (HCPs) by KOH chemical activation, and the nitrogen (N) content and porosity of the NPCs were carefully tuned by using pre-designed HCPs prepared from N-vinylimidazole (VIM) with the different feeding amount in the polymerization. The results indicate that the NPCs have a controllable N content (0.44–2.81 wt%) and porosity (BET surface area: 1248–2059 m2/g, pore volume: 0.80–1.12 cm3/g). These NPCs have a high CO2 uptake (180–258 mg/g at 273 K and 1.0 bar, 41–73 mg/g at 273 K and 0.15 bar) at a low pressure. In particular, the N content plays negligible role as compared to the porosity, and the CO2 uptake is linearly dependent on the pore volume for narrow micropores (Vd, d