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Facile fabrication of N/O co-doped activated carbon hollow fibers for hydrogen storage at atmospheric pressure

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Abstract

Polyacrylonitrile-based nascent fibers (PAN-NFs) with skin–core structure are commonly inferior fiber or waste fiber, which often abundanted in the industrial production process of polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-based carbon fibers. At present, the related research about the skin–core structure of PAN fiber mainly focuses on its regulation and elimination. Based on the different activation difficulty between skin part and core part, we proposed a new way to prepare activated carbon hollow fiber from PAN-NFs with skin–core structure. Phosphoric acid activation process is used in the facile fabrication of nitrogen, oxygen co-doped activated carbon hollow fiber (N/O-ACHF). The synthetic N/O-ACHF has the structural characteristics of smooth outer wall, while the inner wall is densely covered with micrometer-scale macropores (0.31–2.18 μm) and abundant micropores/mesopores (0–6 nm), which provides excellent structural conditions for hydrogen storage at atmospheric pressure. SBET, micropore volume, surface oxygen heteroatom content and surface nitrogen heteroatom content of N/O-ACHF are 545.72 m2/g, 0.188 cm3/g, 15.26 at% and 4.06 at%, respectively. The multistage pore structure and abundant surface functional groups provide excellent physical structure conditions for hydrogen storage. The preparative N/O-ACHF delivers a high hydrogen storage density of 1.35 wt% at atmospheric pressure.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51473088), National Key Research and Development Plan of China (Project No. 2016YFC0301402), Key Research and Development Plan of Shandong (Project No. 2018GGX102029 and No. 2017CXGC0407) and Open Fund of Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Storage Materials, South China University of Technology (Project No. 20212163).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Optics Research and Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, 250100, China

    Junwei Yu, Feifei Chen & Xian Zhao

  2. Key Laboratory of Liquid-Solid Structural Evolution and Processing of Materials of Ministry of Education, Shandong University, Jinan, 250061, China

    Junwei Yu, Shuhan Yan, Shengyao Zhao & Bo Zhu

  3. Carbon Fiber Engineering Research Center, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, 250061, China

    Shuhan Yan, Shengyao Zhao & Bo Zhu

  4. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Storage Materials, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510640, China

    Junwei Yu

  5. School of Mechanical, Electrical and Information Engineering, Shandong University, Weihai, 264209, China

    Kun Qiao

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  1. Junwei Yu
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  2. Feifei Chen
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Correspondence to Xian Zhao or Bo Zhu.

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Yu, J., Chen, F., Yan, S. et al. Facile fabrication of N/O co-doped activated carbon hollow fibers for hydrogen storage at atmospheric pressure. Polym. Bull. 80, 1385–1397 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00289-022-04080-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00289-022-04080-x

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