Biomass-derived Materials for Gas Adsorption Applications

The development of technologies devoted to re-cycle and/or re-use wastes generated from the industrial processing of agricultural raw materials is a research topic attracting increasing attention. In this work, different carbonaceous biomass-derived materials were prepared with the aim of compare the performances of materials with different chemical surface properties as gas adsorbents. The final goal of the work is to highlight the advantages and disadvantages of using a real biomass as a raw material for the preparation of gas sorbents. Different biomasses were used for the preparation of gas adsorbents: chitosan and thistle (Cirsium vulgare) to produce N-rich char types, rice husk, lemon peels and pectin to produce O-rich char types. Chemical procedures to increase the nitrogen content as well as the surface area and the porosity of the biomass-derived materials were also applied. A selection of the obtained materials, after a deep chemicophysical characterization, has been tested for gas adsorption at high pressure in a volumetric analyzer.