Fabrication of Ordered Uniform Porous Carbon Material and Its Application in Gas Separation

The main purpose of this work is to fabricate ordered uniform porous carbons
and to test their usage in gas separation. The concerned problem statement includes
irregular pores size distribution which will result poor selectivity during gas separation
process. Therefore, the existence of ordered uniform network in porous carbon is
important to overcome the poor selectivity issue. Porous carbons are remarkable due to
the excellent absorption capability in their volume and surface. Ordered uniform porous
carbons could be formed by template synthesis. Different template materials used for
the template synthesis process will produce dissimilar porous carbons properties in term
of specific surface area, pore diameter and pores distribution. The scope of study for
this work concentrates on two main issues. First issue is the effect of template
material's properties to the porous carbons fabrication. While another one involved
application of the fabricated porous carbons in gas separation. The methodology of this
work starts with preparation of carbon precursor. To be more specified, the preparation
of carbon precursor includes synthesis of inorganic template and impregnate of the
template with organic template. The impregnation of the templates means the precursor
is polymerized. Subsequently, the carbon precursor would undergo carbonization
process. The organic material is carbonized. The final stage of porous carbons
fabrication is etching process. Through this process, the inorganic template is removed.
Properties of the porous carbon are determined through characterization process using
equipments such as X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Micrograph (SEM).
The application of fabricated porous carbons in this work could be proven by carbon
dioxide, C02 gas separation using permeation cell.