Three birds with one stone approach to superior N/S co-doped microporous carbon for gas storage and water purification

Abstract Biomass-derived heteroatom-doped porous carbon materials play an indispensable role in energy storage and environment remediation. Currently, combined activation of porogen and organic dopant is resource consuming and complex. Here, a “three birds with one stone” activator, KSCN, was introduced to realize pore formation and N/S co-doping of porous carbon initiated by an oxygen displacement reaction. Multifunctional KSCN resulted in N/S-co-doped microporous carbon (N/S-MPC) materials with a high surface area (1906 m2/g, microporosity ≥ 82%) and N/S content. Most importantly, KSCN can also cooperate with K2CO3 via a carbothermal reduction reaction to improve the surface area of N/S-MPC material to 2659 m2/g. Accordingly, both high microporosity and N/S co-doping of the resulting material led to superior methane storage performance (0.15 g/g) at 25 °C and 35 bar. These advantages also ensure that as-prepared material has unprecedented water purification capability for simultaneous organic pollutant and heavy metal (Pb2+) removal by multiple mechanisms (pore-fitting, π–π bond, and complexation). This multifunctional activator provides a new direction for the design of high-performance biomass-derived carbon materials.