The effect of pretreatment on the adsorption efficiency of activated carbon

Abstract

Activated carbon (AC) is a very diverse adsorbent material with high porosity, high surface area, and excellent performance in vapor phase adsorption. The pretreatment provides a guaranteed way for the efficient adsorption performance of AC, which can remove the impurities and improve the porosity of AC. In this study, the difference between acid pretreatment and alkali pretreatment of coconut shell carbon was systematically investigated. The effect of heating with stirring pretreatment and ultrasonic pretreatment after acid treatment were also researched. The Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) specific surface area, the N₂ saturation adsorption, and the porosity of AC by acid-ultrasonic pretreatment can reach 1094.30 m²g⁻¹, 352.51 cm³ (STP) g⁻¹, and 0.5453 cm³g⁻¹, respectively, which are higher than that of acid-heating with stirring pretreatment and alkali-heating with stirring pretreatment. Combined with the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) analysis data, AC by acid-ultrasonic pretreatment has a better microstructure and clearer aperture. Among the three methods of preprocessing, acid-ultrasonic pretreatment yields the most favorable results. This work provides a possible way for AC pretreatment.

Keywords:

• Activated carbon
• acid-ultrasonic pretreatment
• acid-heating with stirring pretreatment
• alkali-heating with stirring pretreatment

Author contributions

Shuai Yang: investigation, experiment, writing—original manuscript, Yiyang Zeng: data analysis, Chengjian Xiao, Mao Yang, and Xiaolong Fu: writing—review and editing, Yu Gong and Shuming Peng: conceptualization, supervision, funding acquisition, writing—review and editing.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [Shuai Yang], upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant no. 1230051409.