Triconstituent Coassembly to Mesoporous Carbon and Its Application to the Enhancement of CO2 Storage in the Presence of Water

Abstract

Mesoporous carbon materials were synthesized via the triconstituent Co-assembly of resol, tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS), and pluronic F127, followed by the process of polymerization. The synthesized mesoporous carbons exhibit uniform large pore sizes (3.6–6.2 nm), high surface area (940–1310 m2/g), and large pore volume (1.16–1.71 m3/g). Adsorption isotherms of CO2 on sample MC2 were measured at 275 K with various amounts of water preadsorbed. The highest CO2 sorption capacity reaches about 51.8 mmol/g when the weight ratio of water to dry carbon (Rw) is 2.55, which is 1.23 times as high as the highest CO2 sorption previously obtained on CMK-3 in the presence of water. A storage capacity of 269 (V/V) was obtained at 275 K under 3.5 MPa with a packing density of 0.30 cm3/g. By adding tetrahydrofuran (THF) in water as a hydrate promoter, the hydrate formation pressure was decreased from 1.75 to 0.25 MPa with a THF concentration of 6.7 (mol %).