Nanoporous Carbon Materials - How They Benefit Our Lives and the Environment

Broad topic areas covered in the talk will include the development, production, properties, and many uses of nanoporous (activated) carbon materials, especially those that have bearing on our lives and the protection of the environment. A brief walk will be taken through the history of porous carbon, from it’s first recorded medicinal uses in 1550 BC, its link to the Royal Navy’s blockade of French ports during the Napoleonic wars, it’s major development and use in the Great War (and subsequent wars), to helping to put America’s national beverage, Coca-Cola, in our shopping carts. Examples will be discussed of how activated carbon is used to purify the air that we breathe, the water that we drink, and the food that we place on our dining tables. The many industrial uses of activated carbon will be highlighted in the contexts of preventing environmental pollution and the economical recovery of valuable process chemicals. Insights will be provided on the use of porous carbon materials for electrical energy storage, notably in increasingly smaller, yet higher energy density electrochemical (super) capacitors, and in the gasoline vapor recovery systems on vehicles. For those that have yearned to circumvent the Ideal Gas Laws, information will be provided on how to store as much fuel gas (e.g., natural gas) in a cylinder at 500 psi as in the same size cylinder pressurized to 3,000 psi. And just in case those same folks have signed up for a seat on a manned mission to Mars, the talk will conclude with an introduction to projects on the production and use of activated carbon on the surface of the red planet, for the growing of food crops, recycling of oxygen and water, and use in life support breathing systems.