Chemically activated fungi-based porous carbons for hydrogen storage

A set of porous carbons has been prepared by chemical activation of various fungi-based chars with KOH. The resulting carbon materials have high surface areas (1600-2500 m(2)/g) and pore volumes (0.80-1.56 cm(3)/g), regardless of the char precursors. The porosities mainly derived from micropores in activated carbons strongly depend on the activation parameters (temperature and KOH amount). All activated carbons have uniform micropores with pore size of 0.8-0.9 nm, but some have a second set of micropores (1.3-1.4 nm pore size), further broadened to 1.9-2.1 nm as a result of increasing either the activation temperature to 750 degrees C or KOH/char mass ratio to 5/1. These fungi-based porous carbons achieve an excellent H-2 uptake of up to 2.4 wt% at 1 bar and -196 degrees C, being in agreement with results from other porous carbonaceous adsorbents reported in the literature. At high pressure (ca. 35 bar), the saturated H-2 uptake reaches 4.2-4.7 wt% at -196 degrees C for these fungi-based porous carbons. The results imply a great potential of these fungi-based porous carbons as H-2 on-board storage media. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.