Furfuralcohol Co-Polymerized Urea Formaldehyde Resin-derived N-Doped Microporous Carbon for CO₂ Capture

Carbon-based adsorbent is considered to be one of the most promising adsorbents for CO₂ capture form flue gases. In this study, a series of N-doped microporous carbon materials were synthesized from low cost and widely available urea formaldehyde resin co-polymerized with furfuralcohol. These N-doped microporous carbons showed tunable surface area in the range of 416–2273 m² g⁻¹ with narrow pore size distribution within less than 1 nm and a high density of the basic N functional groups (2.93–13.92 %). Compared with the carbon obtained from urea resin, the addition of furfuralcohol apparently changed the surface chemical composition and pore size distribution, especially ultramicropores as can be deduced from the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), and pore size distribution measurements and led to remarkable improvement on CO₂ adsorption capacity. At 1 atm, N-doped carbons activated at 600 °C with KOH/UFFC weight ratio of 2 (UFFA-2-600) showed the highest CO₂ uptake of 3.76 and 1.57 mmol g⁻¹ at 25 and 75 °C, respectively.