Design of Highly Nitrogen-Doped, Two-Dimensional Hierarchical Porous Carbons with Superior Performance for Selective Capture of CO2 and SO2

Nitrogen-doped porous carbons show great application potentials in the areas of heterogeneous catalysis, adsorption, and separation. Nevertheless, the design and synthesis of nitrogen-doped porous carbons with controllable structural characteristics (e.g., hierarchical porosity and effective nitrogen sites) were usually complex and high cost. We demonstrate here a class of 2D, nitrogen-doped hierarchical porous carbons (GC-xs) synthesized from one-step, solvent-free carbonization of the mixture containing glucose biomass and g-C3N4. The resulting GC-xs possess large BET surface areas (474-748 m(2)/g), abundant 2D hierarchical porosity, and high contents of nitrogen sites (11.6-16.3 wt %) with tunable pyridinic characteristics (similar to 62.6%). The developed GC-xs were demonstrated to act as high-efficient adsorbents for the selective capture of acid gases such as SO2 and CO2, which exhibit impressive capacities for selective capture of CO2 (similar to 3.1 mmol/g, at 0 degrees C, 1.0 bar) and SO2 (similar to 11.7 mmol/g at 25 degrees C, 1.0 bar). The GC-xs also exhibit exceptionally high IAST selectivity for CO2/N-2 (0.10/0.90) at 1 bar (340-490 at 0 degrees C and 423-489 at 25 degrees C) and SO2/N-2 (0.10/0.90) at 1 bar (1431-1601 at 25 degrees C and 1502-1803 at 50 degrees C) in comparison with many reported porous adsorbents. The preparation of GC-xs provides a new concept to the design of 2D, highly nitrogen-doped porous carbons with high performance and enhanced selectivity for the capture of CO2 and SO2 from flue gas.