Polyacrylonitrile-based highly porous carbon materials for exceptional hydrogen storage

In this paper, a common low-cost chemical material-polyacrylonitrile (PAN) is transformed into porous carbon with excellent specific surface area (2564.6-3048.8 m(2) g(-1)) and highly concentrated micropore size distribution (0.7-2.0 nm). Benefit to the unique structure, the as-prepared materials show appealing hydrogen adsorption capacity (4.70-5.94 wt % at 20 bar, 7.15-10.14 wt % at 50 bar), demonstrating a promising prospect of practical application. This work also confirmed that the narrow and deep ultramicropore (<0.7 nm) could facilitate adsorption of hydrogen molecules significantly at atmospheric pressure, and the volume increase of supermicropore (0.7-2.0 nm) could lead to hydrogen capacity promotion at relative high pressure (>20 bar), which provides valuable guidance for the construction of ideal porous adsorbent for efficiency hydrogen storage. (C) 2019 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.