Porous Carbon Nanofibers with Heteroatoms Doped by Electrospinning Exhibit Excellent Acetone and Carbon Dioxide Adsorption Performance: The Contributions of Pore Structure and Functional Groups

Rich chemical properties and a well-developed pore structure are the key factors of porous materials for gas storage. Herein, rich heteroatom-doped porous carbon nanofibers (U1K2-X) with a large surface area were prepared by electrospinning followed by potassium hydroxide (KOH) activation. Low-cost urea was chosen as the nitrogen source and structural guiding agent. U1K2-X have a high specific surface area (628-2688 m2 g-1), excellent pore volume (0.468-1.571 cm3 g-1), and abundant nitrogen (2.5-12.8 atom %) and oxygen (4.5-12.5 atom %) contents. Acetone and carbon dioxide were used as target adsorbents to evaluate the adsorption properties of U1K2-X by experiments. These U1K2-X exhibit excellent adsorption performance (260.03-955.74 mg g-1, 25 °C, 18 kPa) and multilayer adsorption (the adsorption layer number n > 2) for acetone, which is mainly attributed to the large specific surface area and pore volume. Besides this, the carbon dioxide uptake reached 2.73-3.34 mmol g-1 at 25 °C. This was attributed to the combination of high nitrogen-oxygen contents and microporous structure. Furthermore, U1K2-X show the desirable repeatability. This study provides a new direction for the preparation of heteroatom-doped porous carbon nanofibers, which will be a promising material for gas adsorption.