The influence of the activated carbon post-treatment on the phenolic

The aim of this research was to investigate how post treatment modification, such as those with sodium hydroxide or urea, can influence the capacity of activated carbon (AC) for phenolic compounds removal from liquid media. The ACs modification was performed using urea impregnation followed by pyrolysis at high temperature. With all ACs used, this treatment induced a pore volume increase, a mean pore size broadening, an increase in the point of zero charge and also in the basic character. The modification with sodium hydroxide brings to light the influence of the precursor nature as the achievements are really diverse. With the ACs obtained from PET, a pore volume and mean pore size reduction occurred, with the AC-cloth no textural effect was observed and with the AC obtained from cork, an enlargement of the mean pore size and an increase of the pore volume were confirmed. The difference in the acidic/basic character exhibited by the modified ACs was in agreement with the presence of acidic/basic superficial groups identified by FTIR. The textural and chemical properties of the ACs affect in a direct way the phenolic compounds removal capacity. Particularly, those modified with urea, which exhibited a superior removal capacity for both phenolic compounds

New acrylic monolithic carbon molecular sieves for O2/N2 and CO2/CH4 separations

8 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables.-- Available online Dec 20, 2005.The modification of activated carbon fibres prepared from a commercial textile acrylic fibre into materials with monolithic shape using phenolic resin as binder was studied. The molecular sieving properties for the gas separations CO2/CH4 and O2/N2 were evaluated from the gas uptake volume and selectivity at 100 s contact time taken from the kinetic adsorption curves of the individual gases. The pseudo-first order rate constant was also determined by the application of the LDF model. The samples produced show high CO2 and O2 rates of adsorption, in the range 3–35 × 10−3 s−1, and in most cases null or very low adsorption of CH4 and N2 which make them very promising samples to use in PSA systems, or similar. Although the selectivity was very high, the adsorption capacity was low in certain cases. However, the gas uptake in two samples reached 23 cm3 g−1 for CO2 and 5 cm3 g−1 for O2, which can be considered very good. The materials were heat-treated using a microwave furnace, which is a novel and more economic method, when compared with conventional furnaces, to improve the molecular sieves properties.The authors are grateful to the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal), the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER) and Scientific and Technological Cooperation Program GRICES/CSIC (2004/5_4.1.1) for financial support.Peer reviewe