Porous Carbon Monoliths Made from Cellulose and Starch

Porous carbon monoliths can be used as key components in a variety of applications, such as energy storage, adsorption and catalysis. The preparation of porous carbon monoliths suffers from several limitations, e.g., time-consuming synthesis steps, the use of hazardous chemicals, limited porosity or mechanical stability. This paper describes the investigation of a simple synthesis route to produce porous carbon monoliths from sustainable carbon precursors. Mixtures from different kinds of cellulose and starch, respectively, have been used as the carbon precursor. Fundamental features of porous monoliths, i.e., the porosity and the mechanic stability, respectively, have been investigated in dependence on the composition of the precursor mixtures. First attempts to explain the observed behavior have already been made.