Meso-porous activated carbon from lignite waste and its application in methylene Blue adsorption and coke plant effluent treatment

Abstract

Coke plant wastewater contains many toxic pollutants such as phenol, cyanide, and ammonia, etc., handling and disposal of which has a significant impact on the environment and human health. A novel adsorbent based on lignite extraction waste was prepared and its effect on the removal of simulated methylene blue, phenol and colour (ortho, para-benzo quinone) from real coking wastewater was investigated. Lignite waste (residue) after humic acid separation has a significant quantity of oxidized functional groups along with residual KOH, which makes it suitable for the preparation of activated carbon with high surface area. Since hydrothermal extraction breaks coal-mineral-pore aggregate, the separation efficiency of ash-bearing minerals improved, 11 % ash coal prepared from the residue with 81.6 % yield. Prepared activated carbon from low ash residue has a mesoporous surface (49.8 nm pore size), 0.554 cm3/g of total pore volume, and 980 m2/gram BET surface area. The adsorption kinetics followed pseudo-second order (R2 = 0.984) for methylene blue, pseudo-second-order (R2 = 0.978) for phenol, and pseudo-first-order (R2 = 0.935) for colour adsorption. Adsorption isotherm at equilibrium shows a maximum adsorption capacity of 120 mg/g for methylene blue, 20.49 mg/g for phenol and 588.23 PtCo/g for colour. The adsorption isotherm was in good agreement with Langmuir isotherm (R2 = 0.989−0.994) compared to Freundlich model (R2 = 0.924−0.982). The presence of negatively charged surface favours the uptake of cationic groups. Apart from phenol and colour, the adsorbent can remove total organic carbon (TOC) by 93.6 % and thiocyanide by 6.7 %. Adsorbent reutilization studies show that, the regenerated adsorbent by thermal treatment can be used for 3 cycles.