Impact of preparation and storage of activated carbon on the high pressure sorption of CO2

Adsorption of carbon dioxide on activated carbons has become extremely interesting in the field of energy and environment. Activated carbon is either used as a model to understand sorption processes on coals as a part of research on CO2 geological storage/Enhanced Coalbed Methane or as an adsorbent for processes such as natural gas treatment or CO2 separation from flue gas. The paper presents results of high-pressure CO2 sorption at the temperature of 318K on two similar activated carbons (Filtrasorb 400 and WAZ 0.6-2.4 mm) where one sample of WAZ was not subjected to any pretreatment procedure. Experimental results were fitted with three parameter Langmuir and therefore it was possible to calculate CO2 adsorbed phase densities. The WAZ activated carbon has a slightly lower sorption even though it was pretreated with the same procedure. The untreated sample of WAZ exhibited sorption which was lower over 15%. Calculated adsorbed phase densities differ between the activated carbons and the lowest value was obtained for the untreated WAZ sample (21.0 mol/dm3).