AI Summary & Key Takeaways
AI InsightThe results showed that the morphological and textural properties could be easily tuned by changing the metal oxide NPs.
📌 3 Key Takeaways
Abstract
In the present study, we successfully prepared two different electrospun polyacrylonitrile (PAN) based-activated carbon nanofiber (ACNF) composites by incorporation of well-distributed $Fe_2 O_3 and Co_3 O4$ nanoparticles (NPs). The influence of metal oxide on the structural, morphological, and textural properties of final composites was thoroughly investigated. The results showed that the morphological and textural properties could be easily tuned by changing the metal oxide NPs. Even though, the ACNF composites were not chemically activated by any activation agent, they presented relatively high surface areas $(S_{BET})$ calculated by Brunauer–Emmett– Teller (BET) equation as 212.21 and 185.12 m2 /g for ACNF/$Fe_2 O_3 and ACNF/Co_3 O_4$ composites, respectively. Furthermore, the ACNF composites were utilized as candidate adsorbents for $CO_2 and CH_4$ adsorption. The $ACNF/Fe_2 O_3 and ACNF/Co_3 O_4$ composites resulted the highest $CO_2$ adsorption capacities of 1.502 and 2.166 mmol/g at 0 °C, respectively, whereas the highest CH4 adsorption capacities were obtained to be 0.516 and 0.661 mmol/g at 0 °C by $ACNF/Fe_2 O_3 and ACNF/Co_3 O_4$ composites, respectively. The isosteric heats calculated lower than 80 kJ/mol showed that the adsorption processes of $CO_2 and CH_4 $were mainly dominated by physical adsorption for both ACNF composites. Our findings indicated that ACNF-metal oxide composites are useful materials for designing of $CO_2 and CH_4$ adsorption systems.