Mesoporous carbon stabilized MgO nanoparticles synthesized by pyrolysis of MgCl2 preloaded waste biomass for highly efficient CO2 capture.

Anthropogenic CO2 emission makes significant contribution to global climate change and CO2 capture and storage is a currently a preferred technology to change the trajectory toward irreversible global warming. In this work, we reported a new strategy that the inexhaustible MgCl2 in seawater and the abundantly available biomass waste can be utilized to prepare mesoporous carbon stabilized MgO nanoparticles (mPC-MgO) for CO2 capture. The mPC-MgO showed excellent performance in the CO2 capture process with the maximum capacity of 5.45 mol kg(-1), much higher than many other MgO based CO2 trappers. The CO2 capture capacity of the mPC-MgO material kept almost unchanged in 19-run cyclic reuse, and can be regenerated at low temperature. The mechanism for the CO2 capture by the mPC-MgO was investigated by FTIR and XPS, and the results indicated that the high CO2 capture capacity and the favorable selectivity of the as-prepared materials were mainly attributed to their special structure (i.e., surface area, functional groups, and the MgO NPs). This work would open up a new pathway to slow down global warming as well as resolve the pollution of waste biomass.