Utilization of walnut shell as a feedstock for preparing high surface area activated carbon by microwave induced activation: effect of activation agents

Green Processing and Synthesis

article

Hongying Xia¹  Song Cheng¹  Libo Zhang¹  Jinhui Peng¹ 

[1] State Key Laboratory of Complex Nonferrous Metal Resources Clean Utilization, Kunming University of Science and Technology;Yunnan Provincial Key Laboratory of Intensification Metallurgy;National Local Joint Laboratory of Engineering Application of Microwave Energy and Equipment Technology;Faculty of Metallurgical and Energy Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology

关键词: activation agent;    high surface area activated carbon;    microwave heating;    walnut shell;   

DOI  :  10.1515/gps-2015-0054

来源: De Gruyter

【 摘 要 】

The present work attempts to convert walnut shell into a high surface area activated carbon by microwave heating and chemical activation. Different activation agents such as KOH, NaOH, K 2 CO 3 and Na 2 CO 3 were utilized to identify a suitable activation agent. The result indicated that KOH was the most suitable activation agent among those agents, with the highest porosity and surface area of activated carbon. The effect of KOH/C mass ratio on the pore structure characteristics of the activated carbon was investigated. An optimal KOH/C mass ratio of 4 was identified, beyond which the surface area as well as the pore volume were found to decrease. The surface area and the pore volume were estimated to be 3276 m 2 /g and 1.952 ml/g, respectively, meanwhile the microporous proportion was 77.51% under the optimized KOH/C mass ratio. The activated carbon was further characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The findings strongly support that the activation agent has a great effect on the preparation of activated carbon from walnut shell.

【 授权许可】

CC BY