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Carbon dioxide-assisted fabrication of highly uniform submicron-sized colloidal carbon spheres via hydrothermal carbonization using soft drink

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Abstract

An eco-friendly and economical method for the formation of highly uniform-sized carbon spheres by hydrothermal dehydration/condensation of a commercial carbonated beverage at 200 °C is reported. Until now, the effect of an extra pressure which is built up by dissolved CO2 on the generation of carbon spheres under hydrothermal condition less than 250 °C hasn’t been demonstrated yet. In general, a complicated reactor is required to put overpressure on the autoclave vessel by adding inert gases, whereas the manipulation of a carbonated beverage including fructose and glucose molecules as precursors is favorable to design a simple experimental set-up and to investigate the effect of extra pressure on the growth of carbon spheres under mild hydrothermal condition. Herein, CO2 dissolved in the beverage accelerates the dehydration kinetics of the dissolved sugar molecules leading to production of homogeneous carbon spheres having a diameter less than 850 nm. In addition, the rough surface of these carbon spheres likely results from continuous Ostwald ripening of constituent microscopic carbon-containing spheres that are formed by subsequent polymerization of intermediate hydroxymethylfurfural molecules.

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Notes

  1. Sprite nutrition facts: http://www.healthy-eating-centre.com/sprite-nutrition-facts.html

  2. Pressure in a can of soda: http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/SeemaMeraj.shtml

  3. Spectral database for organic compounds: http://riodb01.ibase.aist.go.jp/sdbs/cgi-bin/direct_frame_top.cgi

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Acknowledgment

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is operated by Battelle Memorial Institute for the U.S. Department of Energy under contract DE-AC06-76RL0 1830. This work was supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering (KC-01-05-0, FWP12152), U.S. Department of Energy, by a grant from the Fundamental R&D Program for Core Technology of Materials funded by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Republic of Korea, and by the KOSEF NRL program funded by the Korea government (MEST) (no. R0A-2008-000-20068-0). The research was also performed using EMSL, a national scientific user facility sponsored by the Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research located at PNNL.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chemicals and Materials Science Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), 902 Battelle Boulevard, P.O. Box 999, Richland, WA, USA

    Gun-hee Moon, Yongsoon Shin, Bruce W. Arey, Chongmin Wang, Gregory J. Exarhos & Jun Liu

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, 790-784, South Korea

    Gun-hee Moon & Wonyong Choi

Authors
  1. Gun-hee Moon
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  2. Yongsoon Shin
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  3. Bruce W. Arey
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  4. Chongmin Wang
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  5. Gregory J. Exarhos
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  6. Wonyong Choi
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  7. Jun Liu
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Correspondence to Yongsoon Shin or Wonyong Choi.

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Moon, Gh., Shin, Y., Arey, B.W. et al. Carbon dioxide-assisted fabrication of highly uniform submicron-sized colloidal carbon spheres via hydrothermal carbonization using soft drink. Colloid Polym Sci 290, 1567–1573 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00396-012-2729-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00396-012-2729-4

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