Sustainable hierarchical porous carbon aerogel from cellulose for high-performance supercapacitor and CO2 capture

•Porous cellulose carbon aerogels were obtained via carbonized and activated simultaneously.•Cellulose carbon aerogel had a high specific surface area of 1364 m2/g and a high specific capacitance of 328 F g−1.•For the first time, we showed that the cellulose carbon aerogel had a good CO2 adsorption capacity.

Fabrication of cost-effective and eco-friendly hierarchical porous carbons from the most abundant and widely available biomass cellulose represents a critical and sustainable way to solve the crisis of fossil resources. In this work, a hierarchical porous carbon aerogel with desirable macropores, mesopores, and micropores was obtained via dissolving-gelling and subsequent carbonizing-activating process. The CO2 activated carbon aerogel had a high specific surface area of 1364 m2/g and a high specific capacitance of 328 F g−1 (0.5 A g−1, 1.0 M H2SO4) as well as an outstanding cycling stability with 96% of the capacitance retention after 5000 charge/discharge cycles. More importantly, for the first time, we demonstrated that the cellulose-derived hierarchical porous carbon aerogel showed a good CO2 adsorption capacity of 3.42 mmol/g (at 1 atm and 298 K), which indicates the possibility of using this carbon aerogel for CO2 capture.

Graphical abstractFigure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide