Synthesis of Mesoporous Carbon Adsorbents Using Biowaste Crude Glycerol as a Carbon Source via a Hard Template Method for Efficient CO Capture.

Biowaste utilization as a carbon source and its transformation into porous carbons have been of great interest to promote environmental remediation owing to biowaste's cost-effectiveness and useful physicochemical properties. In this work, crude glycerol (CG) residue from waste cooking oil transesterification was employed to fabricate mesoporous crude glycerol-based porous carbons (CGPCs) using mesoporous silica (KIT-6) as a template. The obtained CGPCs were characterized and compared to commercial activated carbon (AC) and CMK-8, a carbon material prepared using sucrose. The study aimed to evaluate the potential of CGPC as a CO adsorbent and demonstrated its superior adsorption capacity compared to AC and comparable to CMK-8. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Raman results clearly depicted the structure of carbon nature with (002) and (100) planes and defect (D) and graphitic (G) bands, respectively. The specific surface area, pore volume, and pore diameter values confirmed the mesoporosity of CGPC materials. The transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images also clearly revealed the porous nature with the ordered mesopore structure. The CGPCs, CMK-8, and AC materials were used as CO adsorbents under optimized conditions. The CGPC adsorption capacity (1.045 mmol/g) is superior to that of AC (0.689 mmol/g) and still comparable to that of CMK-8 (1.8 mmol/g). The thermodynamic analyses of the adsorption phenomena are also carried out. This work demonstrates the successful synthesis of a mesoporous carbon material using a biowaste (CG) and its application as a CO adsorbent.