Porous carbons are commonly used as adsorbent in adsorption process. Most of these activated carbons are microporous (pore size < 20 Å) and these carbons are not suitable to be applied for large molecules. For the synthesis of mesoporous carbon coated monolith, carbonization of poly ethylene glycol (PEG) has been applied to create mesopore size.

This paper reports the preparation of mesoporous carbon coated monolith (CCM) through manipulation of PEG variables, i.e. PEG concentration, PEG molecular weight, and carbonization temperature. Effects of these variables on texture, i.e. BET surface area are investigated by using Box-Behnken design and response surface methodology.

Analysis of experimental data by a Box-Behnken design is systematically conducted using the software Design Expert Version 6.06 to optimize the number of experiments to examine effects and interaction of temperature of carbonization, concentration of PEG, and molecular weight of PEG on BET surface area of CCM within empirically selected range of high (+), low (-), and middle (0) levels.

An appropriate procedure for analyzing a Box-Behnken design is based on analysis of variance. From results of this analysis, it can be concluded that main effects of concentration and molecular weight of PEG and carbonization temperature are more dominant than their interaction effects with respect to BET surface area of CCM over a selected range of operating conditions.