Construction of hierarchically porous carbon from plastic waste for CO2 capture and separation

Greenhouse effect arising from excessive atmospheric CO2 amount and white pollution caused by plastic waste are aggravating the growing ecological crisis. The use of plastics as precursors for the construction of porous carbon adsorbents for CO2 capture is considered a potential win–win strategy to improve environmental problems. Here, porous carbon materials with high porosity were obtained from plastic polyethylene terephthalate as a precursor using different activators under varying carbonization temperatures. Notably, KOH-900 exhibited a significant Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area of 3090 m2/g as well as high pore volume of 1.931 cm3/g, respectively. More importantly, at 273 K and 1 bar, the CO2 uptake amount of KOH-700 was determined to be 6.23 mmol/g. These porous carbon materials hold appealing promise in CO2 adsorption and separation, and this research may contribute to improve the increasingly serious greenhouse effect and realize the resource utilization of plastics.