Abstract
Optical calorimetry is a powerful technique for the characterization of porous materials within only a few minutes (e.g. specific surface area, adsorption capacity). In the current work, optical calorimetry is presented to be a versatile tool for the pore size characterization of activated carbons. Therefore, measurements were performed with six different test gases (N2O, C2H6, C3H8, n-C4H10, i-C4H10, SF6) in the optical calorimeter InfraSORP at ambient conditions. By combining the results of optical calorimetric measurement for each adsorptive, a pore size distribution (PSD) can be estimated in the range of 0.4–6 nm which is in accurate accordance with the PSD of reference CO2 (273 K) and N2 (77 K) physisorption experiments. While common physisorption experiments can easily take a few days, the PSD by using the optical calorimetric screening is obtained within roughly 1 h.
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This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. Dr. Martin Oschatz and M. Sc. Winfried Nickel (TU Dresden) are kindly acknowledged for support during the physisorption experiments.
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Wöllner, M., Leistner, M., Wollmann, P. et al. Estimating pore size distributions of activated carbons via optical calorimetry. Adsorption 23, 313–320 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10450-016-9852-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10450-016-9852-3