Abstract
Animal bones have been used to produce carbon char for quality assessment of activated carbon over non activated carbon (used as sample control) as influenced by method of activations (acid and heat). In this study samples analyzed were carbonized in a closed crucible at 400°C and ground into powder after cooling. 200g of each of the crushed samples was activated using 250ml of 2 M Hydrochloric acid for one hour at 80°C and another 200g was activated by thermal method at 120°C for 3 hours. To obtain the optimum weight lost of the carbons, the carbonization period was varied from 0.5-3hours. From the result, increase in carbonization time caused an appreciable increase in the percentage weight loss, this reached a maximum value at a carbonization time of 2.5 hours for both carbon samples at a corresponding percentage weight lost of 63%, 58%, 54% and 62% for cow, donkey, chicken and horse bones respectively. The percentage of carbon yield of cow, donkey, chicken and horse bones upon acid activation are in increasing order of cow (48.92%) > horse (48.64%) > donkey (46.34%) > chicken (44.80%) bones and horse (37.03%) > cow (36.21) > donkey (34.96%) > chicken (30.18%) upon heat activation. Among the bone samples, chicken bone has the least ash content of 12.84%, 11.05% and 15.84% for acid, heat and non-activated samples respectively. The difference in bulk densities of acid activated and heat activated carbons are infinitesimal. The order of increasing bulk densities is cow (0.80g/m3) > donkey (0.78g/m3) = horse (0.78g/m3) > chicken (0.49g/m3). The heat activated carbons shows higher percentage of hardness than the acid activated and non-activated carbons. This study indicated that activated carbons from Cow, Donkey, Chicken and Horse are effective as adsorbents with those obtained from chicken having better features of adsorbents.
Highlights
Charcoal is a carbonized substance used mainly as fuel in industry
This led to different researches on different carbon containing organic matter such as animal bones and higher plants and their production processes is aimed at low ash content to enhance clean combustion
Increase in carbonization time caused an appreciable increase in the percentage weight lost, this reached a maximum value at a carbonization time of 2.5 hours for both carbon samples at a corresponding percentage weight loss of 63%, 58%, 54% and 62% for cow, donkey, chicken and horse bones respectively
Summary
Charcoal is a carbonized substance used mainly as fuel in industry. Charcoal is used to reduce oxidized iron and in steel production. Carbonization means obtaining charcoal from the raw material and the produced charcoal having low surface area to volume ratio is not an active product. It involves the conversion of organic containing residue into carbon or a carbon containing residue through pyrolysis. Physical activation involves the use of air, carbon dioxide or water vapor at high temperature while the chemical activation process makes use of activating agents such as phosphoric acid (H3PO4) or zinc chloride (ZnCl2) [8]. The important factor that affects the adsorption capacity of activated carbon is its moisture content. A high moisture content of more than 3-5% is considered not good for normal applications [16]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
