Synthesis of NiCl₂impregnated mesoporous carbon and its adsorption activity on CO₂

The continuous increase of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere for decades has influenced the global climate change. Efforts to overcome the high concentration of CO2 need to be done, one of which is the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) method through CO2 capture on an adsorbent. In this research, mesoporous carbon impregnated with NiCl2 (NiCl2/MC) was employed for the adsorption of CO2 gas. Mesoporous carbon was successfully synthesized using soft template method which was evidenced by the results of the XRD analysis which showed typical diffraction patterns of carbon materials which were 25.68° and 43.26° with the Miller index of (002) and (100), respectively. Mesoporous carbon materials and NiCl2/MC were characterized by FT-IR, XRD, SAA and SEM-EDX. The results of the SAA characterization showed that NiCl2/MCbelongs to materials that have meso-sized pores with the pore size of 9.6 nm. The CO2 adsorption test using MC and NiCl2/MC were carried out by passing CO2 gas through the adsorbent for 15 minutes and the result showed that MC material obtained a value of 0.46 mmol CO2 per gram of adsorbent while NiCl2/MC was able to obtain a value of 8.90 mmol CO2 per gram of adsorbent.