Adsorption of congo red on mesoporous activated carbon prepared by CO2 physical activation

This research demonstrates the production of mesoporous activated carbon from sargassum fusiforme via physical activation with carbon dioxide.Central composite design was applied to conduct the experiments at different levels by altering three operating parameters.Activation temperature(766-934℃),CO2 flow rate(0.8-2.8 L·min^-1)and activation time(5-55 min)were the variables examined in this study.The effect of parameters on the specific surface area,total pore volume and burn-out rate of activated carbon was studied,and the influential parameters of methylene blue adsorption value were identified employing analysis of variance.The optimum conditions for maximum methylene blue adsorption value were:activation temperature=900℃,activation time=29.05 min and CO2 flow rate=1.8 L·min(-1).The activated carbon produced under optimum conditions was characterized by BET,FTIR and SEM.The adsorption behavior on congo red was studied.The effect of parameters on the adsorbent dosage,temperature,PH and initial congo red concentration was investigated.The adsorption properties of the activated carbon were investigated by kinetics.The equilibrium removal rate and maximum adsorption capacity reaches up to 94.72%,234 mg·g^-1,respectively when initial congo red concentration is 200 mg·L^-1 under adsorbent dosage(0.8 g·L^-1),temperature(30℃),PH7.

Preparation of mesoporous activated carbons from coal liquefaction residue for methane decomposition

Mesoporous activated carbons were prepared from direct coal liquefaction residue （CLR） by KOH activation method, and the experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of KOH/CLR ratio, solvent for mixing the CLR and KOH, and carbonization procedure on the resultant carbon texture and catalytic activity for catalytic methane decomposition （CMD）. The results showed that optimal KOH/CLR ratio of 2 ： 1; solvent with higher solubility to KOH or the CLR, and an appropriate carbonization procedure are conductive to improving the carbon pore structure and catalytic activity for CMD. The resultant mesoporous carbons show higher and more stable activity than microporous carbons. Additionally, the relationship between the carbon textural properties and the catalytic activity for CMD was also discussed.

Fabrication, characterization and evaluation of mesoporous activated carbons from agricultural waste： Jerusalem artichoke stalk as an example

This work explores the feasibility of Jerusalem artichoke stem （JAS）, an agricultural waste, as an alternative precursor for fabrication of mesoporous activated carbon （MAC） via conventional ZnC12 activation. The as-prepared JAS-MACs were characterized by thermogravimetric, nitrogen gas adsorption isotherm and high resolution scanning electron microscopy analysis. The interacting effects of chemical dosage, activation temperature and time on the mesoporosity, mesopore volume and carbon yield were investigated, and further optimized by response surface methodology （RSM）. The Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area, mesoporosity and mesopore volume of the JAS-MAC prepared under optimum condition were identified to be 1631 m^2·g ^-1, 90.16% and 1.11 cm3·g ^-1, respectively. Compared with commercial activated carbons, this carbon exhibited a comparable monolayer adsorption capacity of 374.5 mg .g 1 for Methylene Blue dye. The findings suggest that RSM could be an effective approach for optimizing the pore structure of fabricated activated carbons.

Anaerobic tapered fluidized bed reactor for starch wastewater treatment and modeling using multilayer perceptron neural network

treatability of synthetic sago wastewater was investigated in a laboratory anaerobic tapered fluidized bed reactor （ATFBR） with a mesoporous granular activated carbon （GAC） as a support material. The experimental protocol was defined to examine the effect of the maximum organic loading rate （OLR）, hydraulic retention time （HRT）, the efficiency of the reactor and to report on its steady- state performance. The reactor was subjected to a steady-state operation over a range of OLR up to 85.44 kg COD/（m^3·d）. The COD removal efficiency was found to be 92% in the reactor while the biogas produced in the digester reached 25.38 m^3/（m^3·d） of the reactor. With the increase of OLR from 83.7 kg COD/（m^3·d）, the COD removal efficiency decreased. Also an artificial neural network （ANN） model using multilayer perceptron （MLP） has been developed for a system of two input variable and five output dependent variables. For the training of the input-output data, the experimental values obtained have been used. The output parameters predicted have been found to be much closer to the corresponding experimental ones and the model was validated for 30% of the untrained data. The mean square error （MSE） was found to be only 0.0146.

Immobilized reactor for rapid destruction of recalcitrant organics and inorganics in tannery wastewater

The wastewater discharged from tanneries lack biodegradability due to the presence of recalcitrant compounds at significant concentration. The focal theme of the present investigation was to use chemo-autotrophic activated carbon oxidation(CAACO) reactor, an immobilized cell reactor using chemoautotrophs for the treatment of tannery wastewater. The treatment scheme comprised of anaerobic treatment, sand filtration, and CAACO reactor, which remove COD, BOD, TOC, VFA and sulphides respectively by 86%, 95%, 81%, 71% and 100%. Rice bran mesoporous activated carbon prepared indigenously and was used for immobilization of chemoautotrophs. The degradation of xenobiotic compounds by CAACO was confirmed through HPLC and FT-IR techniques.