Paper details

Title:

High Surface Area, Porosity Designed Activated Carbons from Biomass Cotton Waste

Author(s):

Nahil, M.A., Williams, P.T.

Document(s):

Abstract:

Biomass cotton stalks have been used as raw materials to obtain activated carbons with high surface area via phosphoric acid chemical activation under a nitrogen atmosphere or by simultaneous treatment with phosphoric acid and steam as the chemical and physical agents, respectively. Both the surface area and the mesopore content could be manipulated by controlling the experimental parameters. These parameters included H3PO4 to raw material ratio and the temperature of activation. The product activated carbons were characterised by N2 adsorption at 77 K. It was demonstrated that increasing impregnation ratio favours the development of mesopores especially at high activation temperature, while the presence of steam in the H3PO4 activation process compared to nitrogen facilitates the development of mesoporosity to a much higher extent. The chemically (H3PO4) activated carbons prepared in this study showed high BET surface area ranging from 327 to 1718 m2/g, a total pore volume of 0.15­ 1.23 cm3/g with mesopore volume between 0 and 0.61 cm3/g. Under a steam/nitrogen atmosphere, the BET surface area ranged from 717 to 1955 m2/g, the total pore volume of 0.34-1.70 cm3/g with mesopore volume between 0.02 and 0.89 cm3/g. The results suggest the practical feasibility of phosphoric acid activation of biomass in the form of cotton stalks under different atmospheres, which produces high quality high surface area activated carbons. In addition, the research also demonstrated the possibility of the control of activated carbon porosity type depending on the process parameters such that activated carbons with a high fraction of either mesopores or micropores can be produced.

Keywords:

activated carbon, agricultural residues, steam, cotton stalks, phosphoric acid

Topic:

Biomass Resources

Subtopic:

Biomass residues and by-products

Event:

19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition

Session:

VP1.2.17

Pages:

452 - 458

ISBN-13:

978-88-89407-55-4

ISBN-10:

88-89407-55-7

Paper DOI:

10.5071/19thEUBCE2011-VP1.2.17

Price:

FREE