Estimating pore size distributions of activated carbons via optical calorimetry

Optical calorimetry is a powerful technique for the characterization of porous materials within only a few minutes (e.g. specific surface area, adsorption capacity). In the current work, optical calorimetry is presented to be a versatile tool for the pore size characterization of activated carbons. Therefore, measurements were performed with six different test gases (N2O, C2H6, C3H8, n-C4H10, i-C4H10, SF6) in the optical calorimeter InfraSORP at ambient conditions. By combining the results of optical calorimetric measurement for each adsorptive, a pore size distribution (PSD) can be estimated in the range of 0.4-6 nm which is in accurate accordance with the PSD of reference CO2 (273 K) and N2 (77 K) physisorption experiments. While common physisorption experiments can easily take a few days, the PSD by using the optical calorimetric screening is obtained within roughly 1 h.