A novel melt infiltration method promoting porosity development of low-rank coal derived activated carbon as supercapacitor electrode materials

Publication date: Available online 17 July 2018Source: Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical EngineersAuthor(s): Lijie Wang, Fei Sun, Jihui Gao, Xinxin Pi, Tong Pei, Zhipeng Qie, Guangbo Zhao, Yukun QinAbstractFocusing on the bottlenecks of traditional physical or chemical activation methods for the preparation of activated carbons, we report a simple and scalable melt infiltration strategy assisted with CO2 activation for the preparation of activated carbons from Chinese large-scale reserve Zhundong coal. The preparation is achieved by the melt infiltration of a small amount of anhydrous FeCl3 (10–20 wt%) into the coal framework and subsequent CO2-assisted physical activation during which the encapsulated iron species play the dual role of pore-forming templates and activating catalysts. The as-obtained MI-AC-2 possesses a partially hierarchical pore structure with a high specific surface area of 1872 m2 g−1, five times more than the activated carbon prepared by solely physical activation, which endows the constructed MI-AC-2 electrode with good supercapacitive performances. Relative to the large consumption of activation agents used in a traditional chemical activation process, such a new method with low-cost resource materials and the low-dose FeCl3 additive paves a scalable way to loading metal precursor into coal/biomass for the preparation of high-porosity activated carbons. This work also provides a simple and efficient strategy to encapsulate active mater...
Source: Journal of the Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers - Category: Chemistry Source Type: research