A simple method was developed to tune the porosity of coal-derived activated carbons, which provided a model adsorbent system to investigate the volumetric CO₂ adsorption performance. Specifically, the method involved the variation of the activation temperature in a K₂CO₃ induced chemical activation process which could yield activated carbons with defined microporous (< 2 nm, including ultra-microporous < 1 nm) and meso-microporous structures. CO₂ adsorption isotherms revealed that the microporous activated carbon has the highest measured CO₂ adsorption capacity (6.0 mmol·g₋₁ at 0 °C and 4.1 mmol·g₋₁ at 25 °C), whilst ultra-microporous activated carbon with a high packing density exhibited the highest normalized capacity with respect to packing volume (1.8 mmol·cm₋₃ at 0 °C and 1.3 mmol·cm₋₃ at 25 °C), which is significant. Both experimental correlation analysis and molecular dynamics simulation demonstrated that (i) volumetric CO₂ adsorption capacity is directly proportional to the ultra-micropore volume, and (ii) an increase in micropore sizes is beneficial to improve the volumetric capacity, but may lead a low CO₂ adsorption density and thus low pore space utilization efficiency. The adsorption experiments on the activated carbons established the criterion for designing CO₂ adsorbents with high volumetric adsorption capacity.

开发了一种简单的方法来调节煤衍生活性炭的孔隙率，该方法为研究体积 CO ₂吸附性能提供了模型吸附剂系统。具体而言，该方法涉及在 K ₂ CO ₃诱导的化学活化过程中活化温度的变化，该过程可以产生具有限定微孔（< 2 nm，包括超微孔 < 1 nm）和中微孔结构的活性炭。CO ₂吸附等温线表明，微孔活性炭具有最高的CO ₂吸附容量（ 0℃时为6.0 mmol·g _{-1和4.1 mmol·g -1}在 25 °C 时），而具有高填充密度的超微孔活性炭在填充体积方面表现出最高的归一化容量（0 °C 时为1.8 mmol·cm _-3和25 °C 时为1.3 mmol·cm _-3 ） , 这很重要。实验相关性分析和分子动力学模拟均表明（i）体积CO ₂吸附容量与超微孔体积成正比，（ii）微孔尺寸的增加有利于提高体积容量，但可能导致低CO ₂吸附密度低，因此孔隙空间利用效率低。活性炭的吸附实验确立了设计 CO _2的标准具有高体积吸附能力的吸附剂。