Chitosan, a heteropolysaccharide
obtained from the N-deacetylation of chitin, has stood out as a raw
material to produce CO2 adsorbents. In this work, we report
the hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of chitosan for different times
and the potential of the materials for CO2 adsorption.
Elemental analysis indicated that the carbon weight content increases,
whereas the relative amount of oxygen atoms decreases upon increasing
the time of HTC. The relative nitrogen content was almost constant,
indicating that HTC did not lead to significant loss of nitrogenated
compounds. FTIR and 13C MAS/NMR spectra suggest that the
structure of the sorbents becomes more aromatic with the increase
of HTC time. The thermal properties of HTC materials were similar
to that of chitosan, whereas their basicity was less compared to that
of the parent chitosan. SEM images did not show significant porosity,
which was confirmed by the BET area of the materials, around 2 m2·g–1, similar to that of the parent
chitosan. The materials were tested for CO2 capture at
25 °C and 1 bar; the HTC chitosan adsorbents showed CO2 uptakes about 4-fold higher than that of the parent chitosan. The
adsorption process was better described by the Freundlich isotherm
and the pseudo-second-order kinetic model.