Partial Delignification as Pretreatment for Nanoporous Carbon Material from Biomass.

For the pretreatment in order to nano prepare porous carbon from biomass such as bamboo, a mixture of acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide was used for the partial delignification of bamboo. The pretreatment should be effective for the removal of lignin because the lignin percentage after the pretreatment depended on the treatment time and the treatment temperature. For the concentration of the mixture used for the pretreatment in this study, a small amount of lignin (ca. 2 wt%) remained even after a sufficiently-long treatment time. The BET specific surface area of the carbon material prepared by the heat treatment at 800 degrees C for 1 h under flowing N2 was related to the pretreatment conditions, and the specific surface areas of the samples were found to be related to the lignin percentage. The removal of lignin while maintaining the microstructure derived from plant tissue could be the reason for the local maximum of the specific surface area at ca. 5% of the lignin.