Synergy between alkali activation and a salt template in superactive carbon production from lignin

Due to growing demand, the performance of traditional active carbon is
insufficient. An innovative solution is superactive carbon with an
ultra-high surface area as high as 3000 m2/g. However, this material is
very costly due to the considerable amount of alkali used in its
manufacturing. To obtain superactive carbon from lignin, KOH and KCl
were used simultaneously. The method was thoroughly studied to describe
the mechanism of pore origin and control the pore size. Because of
synergy between KOH and KCl, superactive carbon with an ultra-high
surface area (2938 ± 42 m2/g) was obtained at essentially diminished KOH
consumption (1 g/g) in contrast to previously reported methods. The
process was optimised using the response surface method (RSM). The pore
size can be tuned by varying the amount of KOH and temperature. Observed
synergy enabled reduced alkali consumption, overcoming the barrier to
widespread implementation of superactive carbon.