Preparation of Activated Carbon by Chemical Activation under Vacuum

Abstract

Activated carbons especially used for gaseous adsorption were prepared from Chinesefir sawdust by zinc chloride activation under vacuum condition. The micropore structure, adsorption properties, and surface morphology of activated carbons obtained under atmosphere and vacuum were investigated. The prepared activated carbons were characterized by SEM, FTIR, and nitrogen adsorption. It was found that the structure of the starting material is kept after activation. The activated carbon prepared under vacuum exhibited higher values of the BET surface area (up to 1079 m2 g(-1)) and total pore volume (up to 0.5665 cm3 g(-1)) than those of the activated carbon obtained under atmosphere. This was attributed to the effect of vacuum condition that reduces oxygen in the system and limits the secondary reaction of the organic vapor. The prepared activated carbon has well-developed microstructure and high microporosity. According to the data obtained, Chinese fir sawdust is a suitable precursor for activated carbon preparation. The obtained activated carbon could be used as a low-cost adsorbent with favorable surface properties. Compared with the traditional chemical activation, vacuum condition demands less energy consumption, simultaneity, and biomass-oil is collected in the procedure more conveniently. FTIR analysis showed that heat treatment would result in the aromatization of the carbon structure.

Biomass-derived renewable carbon materials for electrochemical energy storage

“…To date, various raw materials, ranging from traditional coal, pitches, cokes, peat, lignite to renewable biomass precursors including different agricultural and forestry wastes (such as corncob, rice husks, rice straw, saw dust, nut shells, wood and barks) have been widely used for the industrial production of ACs by chemical activation method [41,63,64]. Especially, as demonstrated in Figure 4(c), KOH-activated porous carbons from abundant natural biomass sources, such as pig bone, fish scale, wheat flour, wheat straw, corncob, fungi, banana peel and pomelo peel gelatin, have been prepared for the energy conversion and storage application [65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73].…”

Impact of petroleum coke characteristics on the adsorption of the organic fractions from oil sands process-affected water

“…5a. The absorption peaks at 1,680, 1,583, and 874 cm -1 were characteristics of carbonyl stretching vibrations, N-H bending vibration of primary amines, and C-H bending vibrations of benzenes, respectively (Juan and Ke-Qiang 2009;Pradhan and Sandle 1999;Shen et al 2008). The broad absorption band in the region of 3,400-2,500 cm -1 was related to the stretching vibration of O-H groups (Jiang et al 2008;Njoku and Hameed 2011;Pradhan and Sandle 1999).…”

“…FT-IR analysis is an important characterization method for the investigation of the changes in the surface properties of the adsorbents (Alhamed and Bamufleh 2009;Juan and Ke-Qiang 2009;Rennert et al 2007). The FT-IR absorption spectra of the fresh and saturated PC at 200 g/ L and 16-h contact time are shown in Fig.…”

Comparative study on microstructure and surface properties of keratin- and lignocellulosic-based activated carbons

“…Depending on the precursor used, the ACs had different pore sizes and pore shapes between cellulose fiber and keratin waste based carbons. Because of the consumption of oxygen in the N 2 atmosphere, the surface was smooth [2]. Fig.…”

“…Activated carbon (AC) is well known as an effective adsorbent which is widely applied in the separation and purity process for wastewater and exhaust gas operation [1] and [2]. It is also used as a catalyst carrier, raw material of capacitor and solid-phase extractors from aqueous solutions [3].…”