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The impact of effective pore percentage on CH4/N2 separation in coal-based activated carbon

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Abstract

The efficient separation of CH4/N2 using activated carbon depends on the strict regulation of carbon pore structure. However, the relationship between pore structure and separation performance remains inadequately explored in the literature. This study employed a sample set comprising 38 coal-based granular activated carbons with diverse pore structural parameters to investigate the impact of pore size distribution on CH4/N2 separation using advanced statistical methods. Through Pearson’s correlation analysis, this study reveals that the effective pores for CH4/N2 separation in coal-based activated carbon are those with diameters less than 1 nm, with the optimal pore size range being 0.4–0.7 nm. A novel pore structural parameter, effective pore percentage, was proposed, which exhibits a stronger correlation to separation performance and predicts the separation performance of the activated carbon more accurately than commonly used parameters. Ridge regression analysis revealed that a high proportion of effective pores (< 1 nm) generally results in higher separation efficiency, while an excessively high proportion of larger pores (> 1 nm) can diminish the separation performance of CH4/N2. This study has important implications for investigating the separation mechanism of coal-based activated carbon for CH4/N2 and for developing efficient coal-based activated carbon for purifying coalbed gas.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Chongqing Science and Technology Commission Projects (grant nos. cstc2018jcyj-yszxX0005, and cstc2020yszx-jcyjX0008).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Coal Mine Disaster Dynamics and Control, School of Resources and Safety Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400044, China

    Ran Xu, Xuefu Xian & Min Gu

  2. Department of Earth and Space Science, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Zhenlong Song

Authors
  1. Ran Xu
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  4. Min Gu
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Contributions

RX and ZS participated in the design of the whole study; RX contributed to writing this manuscript and organizing all the experiments; XX and MG reviewed the final paper and made important suggestions and recommendations for paper; ZS contributed to analyzing the data and treatment of experimental samples.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhenlong Song.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Appendix 1 Pore structure characteristics of 38 coal-based AC samples.

Appendix 1 Pore structure characteristics of 38 coal-based AC samples.

Sample

SBET (m2 g−1)

Vt (cm3 g−1)

APD (nm)

α

Sample

SBET (m2 g−1)

Vt (cm3 g−1)

APD (nm)

α

A-1

123.81

0.07

2.10

1.04

A-20

788.80

0.40

2.04

1.31

A-2

280.76

0.12

1.72

1.75

A-21

1367.38

0.85

2.47

1.46

A-3

493.67

0.20

1.63

2.40

L-1

40.21

0.04

3.65

1.14

A-4

587.73

0.24

1.62

2.93

L-2

12.06

0.01

3.98

1.06

A-5

631.60

0.26

1.66

2.22

L-3

2.35

0.00

5.03

1.02

A-6

698.66

0.30

1.70

2.67

L-4

234.25

0.14

2.46

1.00

A-7

895.21

0.38

1.71

2.65

L-5

232.45

0.14

2.49

2.31

A-8

476.60

0.21

1.76

2.88

L-6

389.70

0.24

2.47

2.05

A-9

333.72

0.18

2.12

2.88

L-7

626.51

0.17

1.08

2.15

A-10

608.18

0.25

1.67

2.75

L-8

327.38

0.19

2.30

2.36

A-11

679.43

0.29

1.72

2.53

L-9

233.00

0.17

2.91

1.43

A-12

715.14

0.31

1.74

2.46

L-10

343.52

0.28

3.22

2.10

A-13

840.52

0.36

1.71

2.47

L-11

240.74

0.25

4.11

1.46

A-14

1211.74

0.57

1.88

2.16

L-12

462.09

0.25

2.20

3.18

A-15

738.88

0.32

1.73

2.40

L-13

508.85

0.40

3.12

2.52

A-16

1141.79

0.53

1.87

2.10

L14

444.88

0.32

2.91

2.32

A-17

999.34

0.45

1.82

2.03

L-15

512.86

0.42

3.26

2.26

A-18

554.00

0.27

1.97

1.98

L-16

516.26

0.29

2.22

2.96

A-19

1150.54

0.55

1.93

1.76

L-17

602.42

0.53

3.50

2.66

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Xu, R., Xian, X., Song, Z. et al. The impact of effective pore percentage on CH4/N2 separation in coal-based activated carbon. J Mater Sci 58, 13635–13648 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-023-08869-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-023-08869-7

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