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Activated carbon Activated carbon, also called activated charcoal, activated coal, or carbo activatus, is a form of carbon processed to be riddled with small, low-volume pores that increase the surface area available for adsorption or chemical reactions.[1] Activated is sometimes substituted with active. Due to its high degree of microporosity, just one gram of activated carbon has a surface area in excess of 500 m2, as determined by adsorption isotherms of carbon dioxide gas at room or 0.0 C temperature. An activation level sufficient for useful application may be attained solely from high surface area; however, further chemical treatment often enhances adsorption properties. Activated carbon is usually derived from charcoal.
Contents
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1 Production 2 Classification o 2.1 Powdered activated carbon (PAC) o 2.2 Granular activated carbon (GAC) o 2.3 Extruded activated carbon (EAC) o 2.4 Bead activated carbon (BAC) o 2.5 Impregnated carbon
2.6 Polymer coated carbon 2.7 Other 3 Properties o 3.1 Iodine number o 3.2 Molasses o 3.3 Tannin o 3.4 Methylene blue o 3.5 Dechlorination o 3.6 Apparent density o 3.7 Hardness/abrasion number o 3.8 Ash content o 3.9 Carbon tetrachloride activity o 3.10 Particle size distribution 4 Examples of adsorption o 4.1 Heterogeneous catalysis o 4.2 Adsorption refrigeration 5 Applications o 5.1 Analytical chemistry applications o 5.2 Environmental applications o 5.3 Medical applications o 5.4 Fuel storage o 5.5 Gas purification o 5.6 Chemical purification o 5.7 Distilled alcoholic beverage purification o 5.8 Mercury scrubbing 5.8.1 Disposal in the USA after absorbing mercury 6 Reactivation and Regeneration o 6.1 Thermal reactivation o 6.2 Other regeneration techniques 7 See also 8 References 9 External links
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[edit] Production
Activated carbon is carbon produced from carbonaceous source materials such as nutshells, peat, wood, coir, lignite, coal, and petroleum pitch. It can be produced by one of the following processes: 1. Physical reactivation: The precursor is developed into activated carbons using gases. This is generally done by using one or a combination of the following processes: o Carbonization: Material with carbon content is pyrolyzed at temperatures in the range 600900 C, in absence of oxygen (usually in inert atmosphere with gases like argon or nitrogen) o Activation/Oxidation: Raw material or carbonized material is exposed to oxidizing atmospheres (carbon dioxide, oxygen, or steam) at temperatures above 250 C, usually in the temperature range of 6001200 C.
2. Chemical activation: Prior to carbonization, the raw material is impregnated with certain chemicals. The chemical is typically an acid, strong base, or a salt [2] (phosphoric acid, potassium hydroxide, sodium hydroxide, calcium chloride, and zinc chloride 25%). Then, the raw material is carbonized at lower temperatures (450900 C). It is believed that the carbonization / activation step proceeds simultaneously with the chemical activation. Chemical activation is preferred over physical activation owing to the lower temperatures and shorter time needed for activating material. Activated carbon is made from coconut shell mainly. It consists of 2 types; fine powder and pills or flakes. The fine powder is good at diffusing in water, so it is used in solution or liquid related industries. For example, it is used to bleach and absorb odor in sugar industry, to produce cooking oil in food industry, and to purify water. The pill or flake type is used in gas-purifying industries / products; such as, air purifier, poisonous gas preventor, and cigarette butt, etc. The growth of activated carbon market depends on the growth of industries that use it, which vary greatly from air purifier industry, drinking water and tap water industry, metal-plated industry, and food industry. In addition, activated carbon can be used in household. Its major household usage is found in products that absorb odors; such as, refrigerator.s stuffy smell, wardrobe.s and closets smells, etc. Hence, it can be seen that activated carbon market is broad and has a potential for consistent demand in the country. Besides, it can be exported to use in the industries that need high quality activated carbon; such as, in particular kinds of air purifiers. However, the import figures are still higher than the export. Important production materials include coconut shells, palm shells, oil, husks, and sawdust, all of which have to be burnt into ashes for activated carbon making. Also, chemicals such as zinc chloride and phosphoric acid are used.
[edit] Classification
Activated carbons are complex products which are difficult to classify on the basis of their behaviour, surface characteristics and preparation methods. However, some broad classification is made for general purpose based on their physical characteristics.
A micrograph of activated charcoal under bright field illumination on a light microscope. Notice the fractal-like shape of the particles hinting at their enormous surface area. Each
particle in this image, despite being only around 0.1 mm wide, has a surface area of several square metres.[citation needed] The entire image covers a region of approximately 1.1 by 0.7 mm, and the full resolution version is at a scale of 6.236 pixels/m. Traditionally, active carbons are made in particulate form as powders or fine granules less than 1.0 mm in size with an average diameter between .15 and .25 mm.[3] Thus they present a large surface to volume ratio with a small diffusion distance. PAC is made up of crushed or ground carbon particles, 95100% of which will pass through a designated mesh sieve. Granular activated carbon is defined as the activated carbon retained on a 50-mesh sieve (0.297 mm) and PAC material as finer material, while ASTM classifies particle sizes corresponding to an 80-mesh sieve (0.177 mm) and smaller as PAC. PAC is not commonly used in a dedicated vessel, due to the high head loss that would occur. PAC is generally added directly to other process units, such as raw water intakes, rapid mix basins, clarifiers, and gravity filters.
Porous carbons containing several types of inorganic impregnate such as iodine, silver, cations such as Al, Mn, Zn, Fe, Li, Ca have also been prepared for specific application in air pollution control especially in museums and galleries. Due to its antimicrobial and antiseptic properties, silver loaded activated carbon is used as an adsorbent for purification of domestic water. Drinking water can be obtained from natural water by treating the natural water with a mixture of activated carbon and Al(OH)3, a flocculating agent. Impregnated carbons are also used for the adsorption of H2S and thiols. Absorption rates for H2S as high as 50% by weight have been reported.
[edit] Other
Activated carbon is also available in special forms such as cloths and fibres. The "carbon cloth" for instance is used in personnel protection for the military.
[edit] Properties
A gram of activated carbon can have a surface area in excess of 500 m2, with 1500 m2 being readily achievable. [4] Carbon aerogels, while more expensive, have even higher surface areas, and are used in special applications.
Activated carbon, as viewed by an electron microscope Under an electron microscope, the high surface-area structures of activated carbon are revealed. Individual particles are intensely convoluted and display various kinds of porosity; there may be many areas where flat surfaces of graphite-like material run parallel to each other, separated by only a few nanometers or so. These micropores provide superb conditions for adsorption to occur, since adsorbing material can interact with many surfaces simultaneously. Tests of adsorption behaviour are usually done with nitrogen gas at 77 K under high vacuum, but in everyday terms activated carbon is perfectly capable of producing
the equivalent, by adsorption from its environment, liquid water from steam at 100 C and a pressure of 1/10,000 of an atmosphere. James Dewar, the scientist after whom the Dewar (vacuum flask) is named, spent much time studying activated carbon and published a paper regarding its absorption capacity with regard to gases.[5] In this paper, he discovered that cooling the carbon to liquid nitrogen temperatures allowed it to absorb significant quantities of numerous air gases, among others, that could then be recollected by simply allowing the carbon to warm again and that coconut based carbon was superior for the effect. He uses oxygen as an example, wherein the activated carbon would typically adsorb the atmospheric concentration (21%) under standard conditions, but release over 80% oxygen if the carbon was first cooled to low temperatures. Physically, activated carbon binds materials by van der Waals force or London dispersion force. Activated carbon does not bind well to certain chemicals, including alcohols, glycols, strong acids and bases, metals and most inorganics, such as lithium, sodium, iron, lead, arsenic, fluorine, and boric acid. Activated carbon does adsorb iodine very well and in fact the iodine number, mg/g, (ASTM D28 Standard Method test) is used as an indication of total surface area. Carbon monoxide is not well adsorbed by activated carbon. This should be of particular concern to those using the material in filters for respirators, fume hoods or other gas control systems as the gas is undetectable to the human senses, toxic to metabolism and neurotoxic. Substantial lists of the common industrial and agricultural gases absorbed by activated carbon can be found online.[6] Activated carbon can be used as a substrate for the application of various chemicals to improve the adsorptive capacity for some inorganic (and problematic organic) compounds such as hydrogen sulfide (H2S), ammonia (NH3), formaldehyde (HCOH), radioisotopes iodine-131(131I) and mercury (Hg). This property is known as chemisorption.
results. Thus, the use of iodine number as a measure of the degree of exhaustion of a carbon bed can only be recommended if it has been shown to be free of chemical interactions with adsorbates and if an experimental correlation between iodine number and the degree of exhaustion has been determined for the particular application.
[edit] Molasses
Some carbons are more adept at adsorbing large molecules. Molasses number or molasses efficiency is a measure of the mesopore content of the activated carbon (greater than 20 , or larger than 2 nm) by adsorption of molasses from solution. A high molasses number indicates a high adsorption of big molecules (range 95600). Caramel dp (decolorizing performance) is similar to molasses number. Molasses efficiency is reported as a percentage (range 40% 185%) and parallels molasses number (600 = 185%, 425 = 85%). The European molasses number (range 525110) is inversely related to the North American molasses number. Molasses Number is a measure of the degree of decolorization of a standard molasses solution that has been diluted and standardized against standardized activated carbon. Due to the size of color bodies, the molasses number represents the potential pore volume available for larger adsorbing species. As all of the pore volume may not be available for adsorption in a particular waste water application, and as some of the adsorbate may enter smaller pores, it is not a good measure of the worth of a particular activated carbon for a specific application. Frequently, this parameter is useful in evaluating a series of active carbons for their rates of adsorption. Given two active carbons with similar pore volumes for adsorption, the one having the higher molasses number will usually have larger feeder pores resulting in more efficient transfer of adsorbate into the adsorption space.
[edit] Tannin
Tannins are a mixture of large and medium size molecules. Carbons with a combination of macropores and mesopores adsorb tannins. The ability of a carbon to adsorb tannins is reported in parts per million concentration (range 200 ppm362 ppm).
[edit] Dechlorination
Some carbons are evaluated based on the dechlorination half-life length, which measures the chlorine-removal efficiency of activated carbon. The dechlorination half-value length is the depth of carbon required to reduce the chlorine level of a flowing stream from 5 ppm to 3.5 ppm. A lower half-value length indicates superior performance.
consist of air space between particles, and the actual or apparent density will therefore be lower, typically 0.4 to 0.5 g/cm^3 (25-31 lbs./cubic foot).[7] Higher density provides greater volume activity and normally indicates better-quality activated carbon.
is placed in a refrigerator box. The inside of the collector is lined with an adsorption bed packed with activated carbon adsorbed with methanol. The refrigerator box is insulated and filled with water. The activated carbon can adsorb a large amount of methanol vapours in ambient temperature and desorb it at a higher temperature (around 100 degrees Celsius). During the daytime, the sunshine irradiates the collector, so the collector is heated up and the methanol is desorbed from the activated carbon. In desorption, the liquid methanol adsorbed in the charcoal heats up and vaporizes. The methanol vapour condenses and is stored in the evaporator. At night, the collector temperature decreases to the ambient temperature, and the charcoal adsorbs the methanol from the evaporator. The liquid methanol in the evaporator vaporizes and absorbs the heat from the water contained in the trays. Since adsorption is a process of releasing heat, the collector must be cooled efficiently at night. As mentioned above, the adsorption refrigeration system operates in an intermittent way to produce the refrigerating effect. Helium gas can also be "pumped" by thermally cycling activated carbon "sorption pumps" between 4 kelvins and higher temperatures. An example of this is to provide the cooling power for the Oxford Instruments AST series dilution refrigerators. 3He vapour is pumped from the surface of the dilute phase of a mixture of liquid 4He and its isotope 3He. The 3He is adsorbed onto the surfaces of the carbon at low temperature (typically <4K), the regeneration of the pump between 20 and 40 K returns the 3He to the concentrated phase of the liquid mixture. Cooling occurs at the interface between the two liquid phases as 3He "evaporates" across the phase boundary. If more than one pump is present in the system a continuous flow of gas and hence constant cooling power can be obtained, by having one sorption pump regenerating while the other is pumping. Systems such as this allow temperatures as low as 10 mK (0.01 kelvin) to be obtained with very few moving parts.
[edit] Applications
Activated carbon is used in gas purification, decaffeination, gold purification, metal extraction, water purification, medicine, sewage treatment, air filters in gas masks and respirators, filters in compressed air and many other applications. One major industrial application involves use of activated carbon in the metal finishing field. It is very widely employed for purification of electroplating solutions. For example, it is a main purification technique for removing organic impurities from bright nickel plating solutions. A variety of organic chemicals are added to plating solutions for improving their deposit qualities and for enhancing properties like brightness, smoothness, ductility, etc. Due to passage of direct current and electrolytic reactions of anodic oxidation and cathodic reduction, organic additives generate unwanted break down products in solution. Their excessive build up can adversely affect the plating quality and physical properties of deposited metal. Activated carbon treatment removes such impurities and restores plating performance to the desired level.
Activated carbon, in 50% w/w combination with celite, is used as stationary phase in lowpressure chromatographic separation of carbohydrates (mono-, di- trisaccharides) using ethanol solutions (550%) as mobile phase in analytical or preparative protocols.
Activated carbon is usually used in water filtration systems. In this illustration, the activated carbon is in the fourth level (counted from bottom). Carbon adsorption has numerous applications in removing pollutants from air or water streams both in the field and in industrial processes such as:
Spill cleanup Groundwater remediation Drinking water filtration Air purification Volatile organic compounds capture from painting, dry cleaning, gasoline dispensing operations, and other processes.
In 2007, West-Flanders University (in Belgium) began research in water treatment after festivals.[8] A full scale activated carbon installation was built at the Dranouter music festival in 2008, with plans to utilize the technology to treat water at this festival for the next 20 years.[8] Activated carbon is also used for the measurement of radon concentration in air.
It is thought to bind the poison and prevent its absorption by the gastrointestinal tract. In cases of suspected poisoning, medical personnel administer activated carbon on the scene or at a hospital's emergency department. Dosing is usually 1 gram/kg of body mass (for adolescents or adults, give 50100 g), usually given only once, but depending on the drug taken, it may be given more than once. In rare situations activated carbon is used in Intensive Care to filter out harmful drugs from the blood stream of poisoned patients. Activated carbon has become the treatment of choice for many poisonings, and other decontamination methods such as ipecac-induced emesis or stomach pumping are now used rarely.
Activated charcoal for medical use While activated carbon is useful in acute poisoning, it has been shown to not be effective in long term accumulation of toxins, such as with the use of toxic herbicides.[9] Mechanisms of action:
Binding of the toxin to prevent stomach and intestinal absorption. Binding is reversible so a cathartic such as sorbitol may be added as well. It interrupts the enterohepatic and enteroenteric circulation of some drugs/toxins and their metabolites.
Incorrect application (e.g. into the lungs) results in pulmonary aspiration which can sometimes be fatal if immediate medical treatment is not initiated.[10] The use of activated
carbon is contraindicated when the ingested substance is an acid, an alkali, or a petroleum product. For pre-hospital (EMT) use, it comes in plastic tubes or bottles, commonly 12.5 or 25 grams, pre-mixed with water. The trade names include InstaChar, SuperChar, Actidose, Charcodote, and Liqui-Char, but it is commonly called activated charcoal. Ingestion of activated carbon prior to consumption of alcoholic beverages appeared to reduce absorption of ethanol into the blood. 5 to 15 milligrams of charcoal per kilogram of body weight taken at the same time as 170 ml of pure ethanol (which equals to about 10 servings of an alcoholic beverage), over the course of one hour, seemed to reduce potential blood alcohol content.[11] Yet other studies showed that this is not the case, and that ethanol blood concentrations were increased because of activated charcoal use.[12] Charcoal biscuits were sold in England starting in the early 19th century, originally as an antidote to flatulence and stomach trouble.[13] Tablets or capsules of activated carbon are used in many countries as an over-the-counter drug to treat diarrhea, indigestion, and flatulence.[14] Previous versions of this article have claimed that evidence exists that it is effective in treating irritable bowel syndrome (IBS),[15] but the reference study given did not use activated carbon (or activated charcoal), rather tablets of non-activated charcoal. It has also been used to prevent diarrhea in cancer patients who have received irinotecan.[16] It can interfere with the absorption of some medications, and lead to unreliable readings in medical tests such as the guaiac card test.[17] Activated carbon is also used for bowel preparation by reducing intestinal gas content before abdominal radiography to visualize bile and pancreatic and renal stones. A type of charcoal biscuit has also been marketed as a pet care product.[18]
reactor turbine condenser. The air vacuumed from the condenser contains traces of radioactive gases. The large charcoal beds adsorb these gases and retain them while they rapidly decay to non-radioactive solid species. The solids are trapped in the charcoal particles, while the filtered air passes through.
The problem of disposal of mercury laden activated carbon is not unique to the U.S. In the Netherlands this mercury is largely recovered[21] and the activated carbon is disposed of by complete burning.
The most common regeneration technique employed in industrial processes is thermal reactivation.[22] The thermal regeneration process generally follows three steps[23]:
Adsorbent drying at approximately 105 C High temperature desorption and decomposition (500900C) under an inert atmosphere Residual organic gasification by an oxidising gas (steam or carbon dioxide) at elevated temperatures (800C)
The heat treatment stage utilises the exothermic nature of adsorption and results in desorption, partial cracking and polymerization of the adsorbed organics. The final step aims to remove charred organic residue formed in the porous structure in the previous stage and reexpose the porous carbon structure regenerating its original surface characteristics. After treatment the adsorption column can be reused. Per adsorption-thermal regeneration cycle between 515 wt% of the carbon bed is burnt off resulting in a loss of adsorptive capacity.[24] Thermal regeneration is a high energy process due to the high required temperatures making it both an energetically and commercially expensive process.[23] Plants that rely on thermal regeneration of activated carbon have to be of a certain size before it is economically viable to have regeneration facilities onsite. As a result it is common for smaller waste treatment sites to ship their activated carbon cores to a specialised facility for regeneration, increasing the process' already significant carbon footprint.[25] Activated carbon used in consumer devices such as oil deep fryers or air and water filters can similarly be reactivated using commonly available heating appliances such as a baking oven, toaster oven, or simply a propane torch.[citation needed] The carbon is removed from any paper or plastic containers that could melt or ignite, and heated to vaporize and/or burn off contaminants.
Chemical and solvent regeneration[26] Microbial regeneration[27] Electrochemical regeneration[28] Ultrasonic regeneration[29] Wet air oxidation[30]