Mesoporous carbonaceous materials prepared from used cigarette filters for efficient phenol adsorption and CO2 capture

Abstract

Mesoporous carbonaceous materials (MCMs) with a 2-D hexagonal (p6mm) mesostructure are synthesized through evaporation induced self-assembly on the surface of cigarette filters by using phenol/formaldehyde resol as a carbon precursor, triblock copolymer F127 as the template and cigarette filters as the matrix scaffold. The obtained MCMs incorporate the advantages of cigarette filters and phenol/formaldehyde resol, and results in enhanced performance for phenol adsorption and CO₂ capture. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy results indicate that the obtained carbon materials have an ordered p6mm mesostructure and good thermal stability. The MCMs possess a uniform pore size (5.1 nm), large surface area (526 m² g⁻¹) and pore volume (0.39 cm³ g⁻¹), as well as exhibiting a considerable phenol adsorption (261.7 mg g⁻¹) and CO₂ capture (2.48 mmol g⁻¹).