Synthetic Architecture of MgO/C Nanocomposite from Hierarchical-Structured Coordination Polymer toward Enhanced CO Capture.

Highly efficient, durable, and earth-abundant solid sorbents are of paramount importance for practical carbon capture, storage, and utilization. Here, we report a novel and facile two-step strategy to synthesize a group of hierarchically structured porous MgO/C nanocomposites using flowerlike Mg-containing coordination polymer as a precursor. The new nanocomposites exhibit superb CO capture performance with sorption capacity up to 30.9 wt % (at 27 °C, 1 bar CO), fast sorption kinetics, and long cycling life. Importantly, the achieved capacity is >14 times higher than that of commercial MgO, and favorably exceeds the highest value recorded to date for MgO-based sorbents under similar operating conditions. On the basis of the morphological and textural property analysis, together with CO sorption mechanism study using CO-TPD and DRIFT techniques, the outstanding performance in CO uptake originates from unique features of this type of sorbent materials, which include hierarchical architecture, porous building blocks of nanosheets, high specific surface area (ca. 300 m/g), evenly dispersed MgO nanocrystallites (ca. 3 nm) providing abundant active sites, and the in situ generated carbon matrix that acts as a stabilizer to prevent the growth and agglomeration of MgO crystallites. The nanocomposite system developed in this work shows good potential for future low-cost CO abatement and utilization.