Activated Carbon from Biomass for Mercury Capture: Effect of the Leaching Pretreatment on the Capture Efficiency

Activated carbons were produced from two European biomasses such as olive residue and wheat straw. The leaching pretreatment is used to study the effect of chlorine and alkali metals on the mercury capture efficiency. The activated carbons were tested for mercury capture in a bench scale reactor against the commercial grade activated carbon NORIT DARCO Hg as well as an activated carbon developed at the Energy and Environmental Research Center (E E RC) from lignite. The mercury capture tests showed that the untreated biomass-derived activated carbons performed fair-to-very good compared to the commercial catalyst and better compared to the lignite-derived activated carbon. The leached biomass-derived carbons were seen to have poor performance in the case of the olive residue and similar performance to that of the lignite-derived carbon in the case of the wheat straw.