Synthesis of activated carbon with highly developed mesoporosity

Mesoporous carbons are very promising materials in research fields dealing with large molecules (e.g. catalysis and biomedical applications). However, recent hard and soft template technologies to produce them exhibit important drawbacks associated with the high-cost of the template and scale-up. Here, we report the synthesis of activated carbon materials with a highly developed pore volume in the range of mesoporosity (up to 1 cm(3)/g) when combining physical and chemical activation of a lignocellulosic precursor (olive stones) and CaCl2 as chemical reactant. (c) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.