Preparation of activated carbon from furfural production waste and its application for water pollutants removal and gas separation

Activated carbon (ACs) was produced by chemical activation of industrial furfural production waste (FPW) by different chemical activators. The carbon (HP-AC500) produced from pyrolysis of H3PO4-FPW at 500 degrees C is microporous carbon with certain proportion of mesopores whose Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) surface area and pore volume could reach 751.8 m2/g and 0.63 mL/g, respectively. The carbon (ZN-AC600) produced from pyrolysis of ZnCl2-FPW at 600 degrees C is essentially microporous carbon whose BET surface area and pore volume could reach 1143 m2/g and 0.61 mL/g, respectively. ZN-AC600 carbon shows better performance in adsorbing phenol with its maximum monolayer adsorption capacity reaching 166 mg/g, while HP-AC500 carbon shows its better performance in adsorbing Cr (VI) with maximum monolayer adsorption capacity reaching 27 mg/g. The adsorption model based on Unilan together with Clausius-Clapeyron equation provides a satisfactory representation for low-pressure CO2, CH4, N2 adsorption on ZN-AC600 and HP-AC500, respectively. Both equilibrium and kinetic results show that the HP-AC500 carbon has better CO2 separation performance. Copyright (c) 2011 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.