Lemon peels, a common biomass waste, have an interesting composition in terms of cellulose and mineral salts that makes them good precursors for activated carbon production processes. From a circular economy perspective, this work highlights the possibility of turning a waste material into a new resource. The resulting nanostructures show interesting performance in terms of specific surface area and total pore volume, with excellent grade of microporosity, that make them suitable for various applications ranging from supercapacitors, sensors, gases separation and storage, etc. The last, and in particular hydrogen storage, represents the most interesting one. In this study the development of activated carbon through pyrolysis method, consisting of carbonization in inert ambient and subsequent physical activation in oxidizing atmosphere is reported. Influence of synthesis parameters on the porosity formation was investigated with the aim of textural properties optimization. All produced samples were initially characterized both morphologically and crystallographycally. Then, textural and adsorption properties were evaluated through volumetric apparatus. The experimental results show improvement of both textural and adsorption properties as function of synthesis parameters, developing adsorbent materials with high fraction of micropores (≃84%), specific surface area (≃500 m2/g) and hydrogen uptake of 0.93 wt% at 77 K and 1 bar.

Effects of activation temperature and time on porosity features of activated carbons derived from lemon peel and preliminary hydrogen adsorption tests

De Rose, Edoardo
Writing – Original Draft Preparation
;
Bartucci, Simone
Writing – Original Draft Preparation
;
Bonaventura, Carlo Poselle
Methodology
;
Conte, Giuseppe
Conceptualization
;
Agostino, Raffaele Giuseppe
Funding Acquisition
;
Policicchio, Alfonso
2023-01-01

Abstract

Lemon peels, a common biomass waste, have an interesting composition in terms of cellulose and mineral salts that makes them good precursors for activated carbon production processes. From a circular economy perspective, this work highlights the possibility of turning a waste material into a new resource. The resulting nanostructures show interesting performance in terms of specific surface area and total pore volume, with excellent grade of microporosity, that make them suitable for various applications ranging from supercapacitors, sensors, gases separation and storage, etc. The last, and in particular hydrogen storage, represents the most interesting one. In this study the development of activated carbon through pyrolysis method, consisting of carbonization in inert ambient and subsequent physical activation in oxidizing atmosphere is reported. Influence of synthesis parameters on the porosity formation was investigated with the aim of textural properties optimization. All produced samples were initially characterized both morphologically and crystallographycally. Then, textural and adsorption properties were evaluated through volumetric apparatus. The experimental results show improvement of both textural and adsorption properties as function of synthesis parameters, developing adsorbent materials with high fraction of micropores (≃84%), specific surface area (≃500 m2/g) and hydrogen uptake of 0.93 wt% at 77 K and 1 bar.
2023
Hydrogen adsorption, porous materials, activated carbon
File in questo prodotto:
Non ci sono file associati a questo prodotto.

I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.

Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11770/350377
 Attenzione

Attenzione! I dati visualizzati non sono stati sottoposti a validazione da parte dell'ateneo

Citazioni
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.pmc??? ND
  • Scopus 12
  • ???jsp.display-item.citation.isi??? ND
social impact