Development of rice straw activated carbon and its utilizations
Academic Article
Overview
Research
Identity
Additional Document Info
Other
View All
Overview
abstract
2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Unrecycled wastes such as rice straw must be responsibly disposed to prevent environmental issues and it would be even better if it makes a profit. Pyrolysis as a thermal conversion process is one option to convert wastes into biochar, which can be used as a catalyst support for bio-oil catalytic upgrading, electrochemical material, and pollutant adsorbent after biochar activation. In the study, KOH chemical activation was applied to have high surface areas (1330 m2/g). For the first application, the nickel impregnated on the activated carbon was used to upgrade the microalgae distilled bio-oil fraction. The upgraded bio-oil was deoxygenated by 42% and desulfurized by 86%. The H/C and O/C ratios of upgraded bio-oil showed close ratios of the petro-based fuels and HHV was obtained as about 42 MJ/kg. Most olefin and nitrile groups were cracked or converted into smaller carbon chains whereas the amount of paraffin and aromatic groups increased. Also, the activated carbon was evaluated as an electrochemical material, a supercapacitor, which showed both the properties of EDLC (electrical double layer capacitor) and pseudocapacitance. The highest specific capacitance was obtained at 93 F/g, which showed a modest specific capacitance. Last, the activated carbon was used as an adsorbent material to remove pharmaceutical pollutions and almost 95% of them were removed in a 24 h contact time.
