Facile construction of highly porous carbon materials derived from porous aromatic frameworks for greenhouse gas adsorption and separation

Greenhouse gas predominantly emission from the burning of fossil fuels lead to a series of environmental problems, the capture and storage of greenhouse gas have become the key to addressing this issue. Herein, we present the facile synthesis of a series of porous carbon materials derived from porous aromatic frameworks constructed from commercially available and cheap building units via chemical activation. In contrast with the precursor porous aromatic frameworks, the porosity of such activated porous carbon materials is greatly boosted and the resulting porous carbon materials feature excellent surface areas up to 2863 m2 g−1 and total pore volumes as high as 1.348 cm3 g−1. The abundant microporous properties endow the materials with considerable greenhouse gases of CO2 and CH4 adsorption ability at ambient conditions, exhibiting that at 273 K and 1 bar the CO2 capture capacity is as high as 6.09 mmol g−1, comparable to those reported porous carbon materials synthesized for this key adsorption. Ideal adsorption solution theory predicts that the prepared porous aromatic frameworks and their derived porous carbon materials display decent CO2/N2 and CH4/N2 selectivities, and thus their construction and properties may pave a new avenue for greenhouse gas capture and separation.