Porous carbon is considered an effective adsorbent for
CO2 uptake thanks to its high textural feature, tunable
surface decoration,
and stable chemical/physical characteristics. Herein, a one-pot self-activating
synthesis approach has been introduced to fabricate disodium 2,6-naphthalene
disulfonate (NDS)-derived self-S-doped porous carbon. With this method,
there is no external chemical activating agents for the activation
process, and the self-activating process occurs by releasing CO, H2O, and CO2 gases during pyrolysis treatment. It
was found that activating temperatures can carefully control the porous
textural and elemental compositions of the as-prepared carbons. Upon
the activating process, the optimal S-doped porous carbon was prepared
at 700 °C, providing CO2 uptake capacities of 2.36
and 3.56 mmol/g at 25 and 0 °C and 1 bar, respectively. An in-depth
investigation indicates that the joint effect of narrow microporosity
and S content determines the CO2 uptake for this series
of carbons. In addition, these NDS-derived self-S-doped porous carbons
exhibit moderate CO2 heats of adsorption, fast adsorption
kinetics, reasonable CO2/N2 selectivities, good
dynamic CO2 capture capacities, and stable recyclabilities.
The presented synthesis method is promising for fabricating facile
carbon-based adsorbents from various organic precursors.