CO2 adsorption by an activated nitrogen doped Multiwalled carbon nanotube/polyaniline material

For effective adsorption of carbon dioxide (CO2), a porous N functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) adsorbent produced by the chemical activation of a MWCNT/polyaniline composite. The adsorption of carbon dioxide by MWCNT and nitrogen-doped MWCNT were investigated. Experiments were performed by application of volumetric method in a dual adsorption vessel at temperature of 298 K and pressures up to 20 bars. The obtained results showed that the equilibrium sorption of carbon dioxide decreased after nitrogen-doped of MWCNT. Actually, the amine coating enhanced the basicity and nitrogen content of the MWCNT. However, it drastically reduced the microporous volume of the MWCNT after compositing with polyaniline(PANI), which is chiefly responsible for CO2 physisorption, thus decreasing the capacity of raw MWCNT. The results demonstrated that chemisorption and physisorption played important role in carbon dioxide adsorption , whereas the physisorption process was dominant for carbon dioxide adsorption on MWCNT raw.