Due to its abundance, cheapness and clean burning characteristics, methane is an interesting alternative fuel. Compressed natural gas is being used in vehicles but its use involves high storage pressures (200bar). Adsorbed natural gas is an alternative that reduces this storage pressure to 35bar at ambient temperature. In order to be economically viable, methane adsorption, which is the major component of natural gas, should be higher than 150 volumes of storage gas per volume of adsorbent. This objective can be achieved by designing activated carbons with a tailored micropore size, between 8 and 11 .2 ?, with a narrow pore size distribution and an appropriate density [1, 2]. The use of petroleum residues as a precursor material has a great versatility when designing activated carbons with specific textural properties. The operation variables of the heat treatment as well as the kind of petroleum residue, determine the characteristics of the mesophase pitch and the activated carbons that can be produced [3, 4]. Thus, the main objective of this study is to reach a compromise between microporosity development and packing density to achieve the largest possible amount of methane storage, expressed per volume of absorbent.
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