Auto-crosslinked macroporous carbon based foam-like materials can be produced by a straightforward thermal treatment from industrial derived humins.<sup>[1]</sup> Humins are the main side-stream products derived by the biorefinery acid catalyzed hydrolysis (ACD) of sugars during the production of platform chemicals such as 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF), levulinic acid (LA) and derivatives.<sup>[1]</sup> The humins structure is a network of furanic rings and aliphatic chains, with several reactive oxygen species such esters, hydroxyl, acid, ketone and aldehyde moieties, while several monomers derived from the industrial sugars dehydration process are trapped in the matrix. Recently we reported that with thermal treatments at temperatures higher than 180 °C is possible to observe auto-foaming behavior, leading to the formation of carbonaceous porous cross-linked structures.These humins foams can be produced directly from the raw material without any step of purification or modification, making the process cheap and easy. By adapting the thermodynamic parameters (temperature, time, isothermal or dynamical cycles) different kinds of porosity could be obtained, tailoring the morphology, the cells dimension, the uniformity of pores, gradients, and open/closed cells ratio. The C % content can be increased with the increasing of the temperature applied in the foaming process, up to a complete carbon based material at temperatures ≥ 900 °C. This can lead to enhanced properties (e.g. electrical conductivity). In this presentation several aspects of humins foams such as mechanism of foaming, chemical composition, physical characteristics as well as applications will be discussed.

Macroporous carbon based thermoset derived from industial side stream humins

2019 Spring National Meeting

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