CO adsorption performance of rubber wood activated carbon

Abstract

Transportation activities are the main source of air pollution in urban areas. Activated carbon materials with highly developed surface area could be used to adsorb transportation emissions. The purpose of this research to studied the efficiency of carbon dioxide (CO) adsorption from vehicle emissions with activated carbon from rubber wood. The adsorbent was prepared by carbonization process at 500 °C for 2 h using 10% ZnCl 2 activator and sieved with a filter size of 200 mesh. The operating conditions of the adsorption process were varied on the length of the adsorbent of 3, 4 and 5 cm. CO measurement caried out every minutes for 5 min. The activated carbon product is tested for proximate analysis, and the results were that the moisture content 4.1%, ash content 8.2%, volatile matter 6.8%, and fixed carbon 80.9%, which means it has met the Indonesian national standards for activated carbon quality. The experiment showed that the percentage of CO removal was influenced by the length of the adsorbent and decreased with increasing contact time. The best percentage of CO removal occurred at the 5 cm length of the adsorbent and at time 1 min which was 79.76%, while the lowest removal was at 5 min with the adsorbent length of 3 cm, which was 43.73%. The adsorption capacity is influenced by the length of the adsorbent and the adsorption capacity will decrease as the contact time increases. The highest CO capacity occurred at 1 min with an adsorbent length of 3 cm, which was 124.35 mg/g and the lowest removal was at 5 min with an adsorbent length of 5 cm, which was 64.64 mg/g.