Development of Advanced Activated Biocarbon from Corn Distiller Soluble via Two-Step Carbonization: Investigating the Synergistic Effects of ZnO and K toward Enhanced CO<sub>2</sub> Capture
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The excessive emissions of CO 2 into the atmosphere have a severe impact on the ecological environment. Activated carbon (AC) offers a promising strategy for cost-effective carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions mitigation as a solid adsorbent. The chemical activation process, which involves direct mixing of an activating agent with biomass, is a common method to achieve a porous morphology and high surface area in AC. Herein, an advanced and highly microporous activated biocarbon was synthesized using a two-step carbonization process consisting of hydrothermal synthesis of the ZnO/C carbon precursor based on condensed corn distiller soluble (CDS) followed by potassium hydroxide (KOH) activation at 700 °C for 60 min. The results indicated that the synergistic use of ZnO and K plays a complementary role in structural development and functional enhancement. This synthesis strategy resulted in advanced activated biocarbon with a significantly higher surface area of 1744.6 m 2 g –1, outperforming biocarbon activated with KOH alone. In this study, it was hypothesized that KOH would penetrate and activate the ZnO/C carbon precursor more effectively than the direct activation of CDS. The resulting advanced activated biocarbon materials were systematically investigated through comprehensive microstructural, physicochemical, interfacial, textural, and thermal analyses. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) revealed a superior 3D hierarchical structure enriched with micropores, favorable mesopores, and interconnected macropores of synthesized biocarbon. Furthermore, CO 2 adsorption capacities were performed at various temperatures (273, 288, 298, and 308 K). The highest adsorption capacities, ranging from 3.70 to 6.30 mol kg –1, were observed at 1 bar and 273 K for all advanced activated biocarbon samples. Notably, the combined catalytic and templating effects of ZnO and K resulted in a highly porous structure with a high surface area, abundant adsorption sites, and excellent selective CO 2 capture properties.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".