Fabrication of Nitrogen-doped Biomass-based porous carbon for CO2 Capture

Abstract

This thesis covers a brief introduction to the porous carbons and reviews previous literature on the synthesis of porous carbons from different precursors including biomass, polymers, MOF and other materials. It also covers the discussions on engineering the properties of porous carbons for CO2 capture such as pore structure, heteroatom doping, amine impregnation and hybridization with other materials. The aim of this thesis is to synthesize biomass-based porous carbons and N-doped porous carbons for CO2 capture. The porous carbons were prepared using date seeds (biomass waste) as the carbon precursor. The liquid state activation process was applied to enhance reactivity, allowing homogeneous distribution of the activator, forming a well-developed porous structure with higher pore volume and surface area. The first objective of this study is to use potassium carbonate (K2CO3) as the activation agent and manipulate the impregnation ratio to synthesise porous carbons with large pore volume, high surface area and tunable pore size. The second objective will include N doping of the synthesised biomass-based porous carbon by using urea as a nitrogen source. The properties of the prepared materials such as surface area, surface morphology, surface functional group and crystal structure are determined and analysed using BET, SEM, FTIR and X-Ray Diffraction techniques, respectively. The synthesized materials are employed as adsorbents and tested for CO2 adsorption performance.