Abstract
A concern over the toxicity of chemicals used during the activation stage in the preparation of activated carbon is beginning to gain attention. The study therefore looked into the possibility of using bio-activators (lemon juice and potash leached from the peel of unripe plantain) as activating chemicals, for environmentally friendly activated carbon. Coconut shell and the peel from unripe plantain were used as feedstock and pyrolyzed at 400 and 450 °c. An impregnation ratio of 0.25:1 was used while laboratory grade potassium hydroxide was used as a base activating agent as a control setup. Characterization of the activated carbon was carried out using parameters like bulk density and yield which were obtained using standard procedures. Results showed that activating carbon using bio-activators as activating agents had very good characteristics when compared with the control. Bio-activators are therefore recommended for the production of bio based activated carbon especially in the fields of medicine, food and pharmaceuticals. The effect of carbonization temperature on adsorption efficiency and pore structure were investigated using methylene blue as adsorbate and SEM respectively
Highlights
Over the years, activated carbon has found immense use in the purification of water and gas, in medicine – as an efficient poison remover from the blood, metal extraction and many other applications [1]
Activated carbon is derivable from organic sources or materials such as wood sawdust, bagasse, rice husks, coconut shell and other agricultural wastes [2,3,4,5,6,7] They usually will have very high percentage content of carbon [8, 9] but with low inorganic matter and cannot be transformed to crystalline graphite when pyrolyzed at temperatures, even up to 30000C [10, 11]
The differences in the yield between the activated carbon obtained from coconut shell were generally higher than those obtained from plantain peel
Summary
Over the years, activated carbon has found immense use in the purification of water and gas, in medicine – as an efficient poison remover from the blood, metal extraction and many other applications [1]. Activated carbon is derivable from organic sources or materials such as wood sawdust, bagasse, rice husks, coconut shell and other agricultural wastes [2,3,4,5,6,7] They usually will have very high percentage content (greater than 85%) of carbon [8, 9] but with low inorganic matter and cannot be transformed to crystalline graphite when pyrolyzed at temperatures, even up to 30000C [10, 11]. Activated carbon is frequently used as adsorbent in the removal of dyes because of its high adsorption capacity. The carbonization stage (pyrolysis) expels the volatile materials from the organic materials, leaving behind only the carbon while the activation stage makes the available pores ‘active’ enough for adsorption.
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