Micro-mesoporous carbon fabricated by Phanerochaete chrysosporium pretreatment coupling with chemical activation: Promoting effect and toluene adsorption performance

Abstract Porous carbons prepared from biomass by the traditional method of caustic potash etching is common VOCs adsorbents, but their lack of mesopores hinders the mass transfer, limiting their application. Herein, we prepared templateless micro-mesoporous carbon with a high specific surface area by coupling Phanerochaete chrysosporium pretreatment to caustic potash etching, and explored its synergy mechanism. The prepared micro-mesoporous carbon has simultaneously high specific surface areas (2202 m2/g) and proportion of mesopores (71.9%). The promoting effect determined by FTIR and TG-MS implied that P. chrysosporium treatment increases surface oxygen-containing groups (K+ combine sites). It led to the simultaneous formation of mesopores without any template. P. chrysosporium pretreated carbonaceous materials exhibited more defects, which resulted in a high specific surface area. Moreover, the samples that were subjected to P. chrysosporium pretreatment and caustic potash etching exhibited higher adsorption capacity (252 mg/g) and higher selectivity for toluene over N2.