Nitrogen-doped porous carbon derived from heterogeneous polymers for efficient CO2 capture

CO 2 capture is crucial for achieving carbon emission reduction targets. At present, porous carbon is regarded as an effective CO 2 capture material. However, the limited adsorption capacity restrains its practical application, due to the insufficient adsorption sites. In this work, N-doped porous carbon derived from heterogeneous polymers is employed to investigate efficient CO 2 capture. Porous carbon was prepared by pyrolyzing KOH activated melamine-phenolic resin-based heterogeneous polymers. By optimizing pyrolysis temperature, the derived carbon material exhibits a high specific surface area (1274.4 m 2 /g), an abundant microporous structure (0.823 nm in pore diameter), and a substantial N retention (5.22 wt%). These characteristics synergistically enhance its CO 2 adsorption performance. Consequently, an exceptional CO 2 capture capacity of 100.8 mL/g (~4.5 mmol/g) at 25 °C and 1 bar was obtained, surpassing the most reported porous carbon materials. Besides, the prepared porous carbon demonstrates outstanding CO 2 /N 2 selectivity (25.0) and rapid adsorption kinetics, fitting the pseudo-first-order model (R 2  = 0.997) with reaching the equilibrium in 60 min. The calculated low adsorption heat (~25 kJ/mol) confirms physical adsorption mechanism, further supported by excellent renewability and cyclic stability over the five consecutive PSA cycles. Comparative analysis highlights its superior N efficiency and CO 2 capture performance relative to conventional porous carbons. These findings not only elucidate the critical role of the pore structure and N-doped in CO 2 adsorption validating the potential of the material for scalable industrial applications, offering a sustainable pathway for carbon capture technologies.