Abstract: Known processes for preparing a porous carbonaceous material require lengthy polymerization and washing steps involving solvents or neutralizing agents. The use of high quantities of pore formers leads to a lower carbon yield and higher costs, and use of sulphuric acid leads to sulphur contamination of the final material, but also to corrosion and corrosive by-products and a more complicated handling of the process. In order allows the manufacturing of a porous carbonaceous material with a high pore volume and avoiding the disadvantages of the known methods, a process is provide that comprise the steps of a) providing at least one carbon source and at least one amphiphilic species, b) combining at least the carbon source and the amphiphilic species to obtain a precursor material, c) heating the precursor material to a temperature in the range between 300° C. and 600° C.

Abstract: Known processes for preparing a porous carbon material with a hierarchical porosity comprise the steps of a) providing at least one carbon source and at least one amphiphilic species, b) combining the carbon source and the amphiphilic species to obtain a precursor material, and c) heating the precursor material to obtain the porous carbon material having a modal pore size and a pore volume. In order to avoid a lengthy hydrothermal treatment and to allow tunability of the pore size, pore size distribution and pore volume in carbon material, it is proposed that the heating step c) comprises a low temperature treatment in which the precursor material is heated to a first temperature in the range between 300° C. and 600° C. to obtain a self-assembled porous carbonaceous material, and wherein heating to the first temperature comprises a first average heating rate in the range of 0.5° C./min to 5° C./min.