Larry G. Christner
LGC Consultants LLC, USA
Title: Molecular probe characterization of microporous carbons
Biography
Biography: Larry G. Christner
Abstract
Microporous and mesoporous carbons are excellent materials for any energy applications. As capacitors, they exhibit high power, a large life cycle, high reliability, and low cost. Coconut shell carbons dominate this market because of their low cost. The large surface areas of these carbons also make them useful in many adsorption and catalytic systems. The pore structure of these carbons allows special selective processes to be carried out such as separation of O2/N2, CO2/H2O, Butene/Isobutene, and many other processes. The detailed parameters of each process play an important role in the selectivity and effectiveness of the process. In the work presented, some of the most important parameters are discussed for microporous and saran fibers at temperatures from 200C to 1000C. These materials exhibited adsorption characteristics of 4Å and 5Å molecular sieves. Activated diffusion is shown to be the dominant factor for the exclusion of specific molecules. The dynamic size and shape of the molecules determine the observed amount of adsorption at a specific time and temperature. It can be concluded that when the molecular dimensions are close to the size and shape of the pores, the most important factors that determine the observed adsorption are time, temperature, relative pressure, and the diffusion path length.