Porous carbon derived via KOH activation of a hypercrosslinked porous organic polymer for efficient CO2, CH4, H2 adsorptions and high CO2/N2 selectivity

•Porous carbon from hypercrosslinked organic polymer.•KOH activated carbon with BET surface area 2186 m2 g−1.•High CO2 uptake (7.6 mmol g−1) and CO2/N2 selectivity (30.2).•Porous carbon also showed high H2 (2.6 wt%) and H2O (57.4 wt%) uptakes.

Microporous carbon having Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area of 2186 m2 g−1 and micropore volume of 0.85 cm3 g−1 has been synthesized via KOH induced high temperature carbonization of a non-conjugated hypercrosslinked organic polymer. Owing to the templating and activation by KOH, we have succeeded in making a microporous carbon from this porous polymer and the resultant carbon material showed high uptake for CO2 (7.6 mmol g−1) and CH4 (2.4 mmol g−1) at 1 atm, 273 K together with very good selectivity for the CO2/N2 (30.2) separation. Furthermore, low pressure (1 atm) H2 (2.6 wt%, 77 K) and water uptake (57.4 wt%, 298 K) ability of this polymer derived porous activated carbon is noteworthy.

Graphical abstractMicroporous carbon with BET surface area of 2186 m2 g−1 has been synthesized via KOH activation of a porous organic polymer and it showed high uptake for CO2 (7.6 mmol g−1), CH4 (2.4 mmol g−1) and H2 (2.6 wt%) at 1 atm together with very good selectivity for CO2.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide