High-Density Nanoporous carbon materials as storage material for Methane: A value-added solution

Nanoporous carbon materials (NCMs) were widely used as commercial adsorbents, due to their salient features like high specific surface area and a significant volume of micropores. The present research work considers the conversion of a mixture of compounds (furfural, hydroquinone, and urotropine) into a NCM, with properties suitable for adsorption and gas storage applications, through alkaline activation. The developed NCM have high surface area of ∼ 2722 m2/g with a pore volume of 1.08 cm3/g i.e. ∼ 80 % pores representing narrow micropores. Further, the density of the NCM is also a decisive parameter for the applications, in particular, methane (CH4) storage. Moreover, the powdered NCM was compacted 2.5 times (to get a monolith NCM) with a slight change in the texture properties. The synthesized adsorbents were tested for the CH4 adsorption, and they showed very good characteristics. Results obtained revealed that, the highest CH4 adsorption capacity value, equal to ∼ 14.3 mmol/g at 10 MPa and 298 K, was achieved on the powdered NCM which after the compaction, to the monolith NCM decreases to ∼ 13.3 mmol/g at the same pressure. Moreover, the highest bulk methane adsorption capacity value was 336 cm3/cm3 which was achieved at 10 MPa and 298 K for the monolith NCM. Thus, this adsorbent with excellent CH4 adsorption characteristics can be used in the adsorbed natural gas (ANG) technology to enhance the energy storage and improve the efficiency.