II International Symposium on Carbon for Catalysis ABSTRACTS

PROPERTIES AND STRUCTURE OF SORBENTS OBTAINED FROM
MISCANTHUS USING WATER VAPOUR AS ACTIVATION AGENT
PP-I-4
Bratek K., Bratek W., Magierowska M., Kulazynski M.
Wroclaw University of Technology, Faculty of Chemistry, Department of Chemistry and
Technology of Fuels, 50-344 Wroclaw, ul. Gdanska 7/9, Poland
e-mail: krystyna.bratek@pwr.wroc.pl
The most crop effective grasses and the most frequently cultivated plants are grasses
named Miscanthus such as miscanthus giant - Miscanthus sinensis giganteus and sugar
miscanthus - Miscanthus chariflorus. The natural habitat of miscanthus grasses is located in
central and South-East Asia. The miscanthus grasses grow to the high from 1 to 4 meters.
They do not require very good soils and can to grow on soils of V and VI class, waste lands,
as well as on soils contaminated with heavy metals. Miscanthus are perennial plants, their
plantations can grow 15-20 years. Their cultivation is very cheap and the high crop of
biomass can be harvested. In Poland the sugar miscanthus is mainly growed. Their crop are
usually in the range of 5 - 30 tones of dry mass per hectare and depends on the type of soil
and fertilization. The main components of miscanthus are: cellulose - 44 % and hemicellulose
- 24 %, lignin - 17 % and other components 15 %.
Miscanthus was considered as a raw material for obtaining of active carbon useful for
purification of aqueous solutions. Miscanthus is cheap, easy accessible, homogeneous and
renewable material. In the literature there was rather quite few information about the
investigations of sorbents from this material.
In the process of activation of char prepared from miscanthus using CO 2 as activation
agent at temperatures of 750, 800 and 850 o C (activation times were from 15 to 90 min) the
active carbon were obtained with efficiency from 92 to 56 %, respectively. Active carbons
prepared from miscanthus, using CO 2 as gasifying agent, exhibited higher iodine number
(140 - 930 mg I 2 / g) and methylene numbers (0 - 6 cm 3 ) in relation to char (13 and 0,
respectively).
The char obtained from miscanthus shown the high efficiency in removal of toluene from
aqueous solutions. Active carbons obtained using of CO 2 as gasifying agent very effectively
cleaned the concentrated solutions of toluene, p-chlorophenol, methylene blue and Congo red.
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