Complete presentation on literature, process and results of the project.

1. PREPARATION OF ACTIVATED BIO-
CARBON FROM SAWDUST, RICE HUSK
AND COCONUT HUSK
VISHVARAJ CHAUHAN (130420105058)
SAGAR DONGA (130420105011)
DENISH PATEL (13042015046)
DIVYESH PANSURIYA (130420105042)
GUIDE: PROF. VAISHALI UMRIGAR
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2. CONTENTS
• Aim
• Objective
• Introduction
• Why Activated Carbon From These Sources?
• Process Details
• Process Block Diagram
• Process Specification Comparison
• Tests
• Progress
• Results
• Inference
• References
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3. AIM
“To prepare activated bio-carbons from sawdust, rice husks
and coconut husks and test them for their physical and
chemical properties. Also determine the best raw material
among the three for production of high quality activated
carbon.”
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4. OBJECTIVE
• In this project, we strive to create porous and high quality
activated carbon from waste sawdust, rice husks and
coconut husks from rice mills, coconut farms sawmills. The
main objective is to create an industrially viable product
while also reducing the amount of waste that is directly
treated and disposed at waste treatment facilities and is
burned at power plants.
• Our most important objective in this project is to find out
which of these raw materials, as in sawdust, rice husk and
coconut husk is the most favourable for production of
highly adsorptive activated carbon.
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5. INTRODUCTION
• Normally, coconut husk, rice husk and sawdust are treated
as wastes and disposed at power plant sites which cause
serious environmental problems.
• Due to high carbon content in them, it could be feasible to
prepare quantifiable and quality activated carbons from
them.
• Rice producing countries like India, Bangladesh, Vietnam,
Thailand etc have a huge potential for the reduction of
waste from rice fields and preparing activated carbon. [2]
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6. INTRODUCTION
• With porous structure, high surface area and low cost,
Activated Carbon has been widely used as catalyst carrriers
(catalytic support), adsorbent to adsorb metal ions and
organic molecules or as electrode materials for batteries and
capacitors. [3]
• Activated carbon is one of the most important microporous
adsorbents due to its tremendous adsorptive capacity, an
affinity for variety of dissolved organics and ability to be
custom-tailored to suit specific application.
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7. According to IUPAC notation, micro porous materials have pore diameters of less than 2 nm
and macro porous materials have pore diameters of greater than 50 nm; the meso-porous
category thus lies in the middle.
Image Source: http://beggcousland.co.uk/products/gas-cleaning/active-
carbon-systems/
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8. WHY AC FROM THESE SOURCES?
• It is particular interest to select the sawdust (45.5% C, 48.1 % O,
6.2 % H, 0.13% N) as the raw material to make activated carbon
instead of other abundant sources such as clay minerals, nut
shells, etc. [1] [8]
• In many countries, residues from oil palm and wood based
industries are the main biomass source. Currently, large volume
of these residues in the form of sawdust, off cut and wood barks
were produced by wood based industries.
• Due to the shortage of wood supply, some of the waste
minimization programs were implemented in these industries in
order to maximize the use of the wood residue. Thus, one of the
cost effective way is to convert the wood residue to activated
carbon. [1] [8]
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9. • So far, rice husk (40% C, 34.8% O, 5% H, 0.8% N, 19.5%
Si Ash) has been successfully used as fuel in many
industrial factories and used as biomass fuel in electricity
generating because of its low humidity and simple
operation. [2]
• Not only rice husk, their charcoal that obtained from
combustion step is also versatile. Both rice husk and rice
husk charcoal have major components namely, carbon and
silica. They have been found to be suitable materials owing
to their high carbon and silica and low ash contents.
• Thus, a possible solving of rice husk is converting it into
value-added activated carbon used as adsorbents. In other
words, the expensive commercial activated carbon will be
reduced.
• The chemical composition of coconut husks consists of
cellulose, lignin, pyroligneous acid, gas, charcoal, tar,
tannin, and potassium.
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10. PROCESS DETAILS
• Methods used for activated carbon production often consist of two
main steps:
1. Carbonization and 2. Activation.
• Carbonization involves the process of oxidizing the non-
carbonaceous material leaving back the large amounts of carbon in
the process. It is often achieved by pyrolysis or combustion in the
absence of air.
• Activation is carried out to open up complex pore structure, create
large specific surface area, initiate good chemical stability, and
activate various oxygen-containing functional groups on the surface.
Activating agents generally act as dehydrating materials and they
may promote the formation of crosslinks. Activation is carried out
mostly in three ways. They are;
1. Physical activation (Heat Treatment) 2. Steam activation and 3.
Chemical activation.8/30/2017 10

11. • Physical activation involves the usage of physical tools such
as pressure and temperature to open up the macro, micro
and mesopores. In steam activation hot steam is passed on
a bed of the material to do the activation process, while in
chemical activation the charge is impregnated into a
chemical that acts as a ‘activating agent’.
• Chemical activation provides the highest quality micro
porous and most efficient activated carbons.
• Pyrolysis in either a fuel based reactor or a microwave/
radiation based heater requires external inert conditions to
avoid the charge reacting and oxidizing.
• Heat treatment is therefore to be done in a muffle furnace.
Therefore, there is usually no combustion involved in the
temperature control of the system, which allows for much
greater control of temperature uniformity and assures
isolation of the material being heated from the byproducts
of fuel combustion and ambient conditions.
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12. • Activating chemicals that can be used: H3PO4, NaOH,
KOH, LiOH, Li2CO3, Na2CO3, K2CO3, KHCO3, NaHCO3,
CsOH, Cs2CO3, RbZCO3, RbOH, Fe(NO3)3, Ni(NO3)2,
CO(NO3)2 and mixtures of the same. [8]
• Phosphoric acid is preferred because it is a non-oxidizing
acid, which acts as an acid catalyst for the production of a
porous, crosslinked carbon structure. Also, H3PO4 seems to
retain or fix more of the carbon in the structure than the
thermal activation method.
• “Burn-off” is defined as the weight loss of carbon source, as
determined on a dry weight basis, that occurs during the
activation process.
• Impregnation Ratio is defined as the weight by weight ratio
of activating chemical to the substance to be activated.
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13. PROCESS BLOCK DIAGRAM
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14. PROCESS SPECIFICATION COMPARISON
The basic materials required are raw materials as in sawdust,
rice husks and coconut shells, chemicals for activation that is
NaOH and H3PO4.
The tools required include mesh screens, muffle furnace,
desiccators and glassware.8/30/2017 14

15. TESTS [11]
• 1. METHYLENE BLUE ADSORPTION TEST (ADSORPTION):
APPARATUS REQUIRED: Glass stoppered flask, filter paper, funnel, methylene blue
test solution
• 2. VOLATILE MATTER (PHYSICO-CHEMICAL):
APPARATUS REQUIRED: Muffle furnace, balance, crucible, lid and stand.
• 3. pH VALUE (PHYSICO-CHEMICAL):
APPARATUS REQUIRED: Distilled water, pH meter, electric heater, thermometer,
watch glass.
•
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16. • 4. MOISTURE CONTENT
APPARATUS REQUIRED: Muffle furnace, dessicators and glassware
• 5. ASH CONTENT
APPARATUS REQUIRED: Muffle furnace, crucibles, weigh balance, dessicator.
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17. PROGRESS
• All raw materials procured.
• All 6 samples of IR 1 and 3 respectively of all three samples
done.
• Tests done at Aqua-Air Environmental Engineers PVT LTD,
Surat.
• Results collected and tabulated.
• All PPRs GTU PMMS site uploaded.
• Business Model Canvas (BMC) prepared, report made and
uploaded.
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18. 8/30/2017 18Image 1: Washed and dried sawdust and coconut husk

19. 8/30/2017 19
Image 2: Muffle furnace pre treatment of sawdust

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Image 3: Post pre heating coarse sawdust

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Image 4: Carbonized coconut husk

22. RESULTS
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23. RESULTS
• Calculation of Surface area based on Iodine
number is done as follows:
• SBET = (IODINE NUMBER * 10-3 / Molar Mass of
iodine) * NA * ω
• Putting the values of Molar Mass of Iodine =
126.92, NA and ω = 0.2096 * 10-18, [1]
• We get SBET = 0.986 * IODINE NUMBER.
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24. 8/30/2017 24

25. INFERENCE
• Based on these results, we can infer that the activated
bio-carbon derived from rice husks perform excellently
as compared to the laboratory scale activated carbon.
• With Iodine Adsorption numbers of 732.33 mg/gm and
722.80 mg/gm of IR 1 and 3 samples respectively, they
are very close to the market lab scale activated
carbon’s value of 790.65 mg/gm.
• Taking in consideration the BET Surface Area calculated
by the Iodine Number, we observe that the BET Surface
Area of our samples of IR 1 and IR 3 are 722.077 m2/gm
and 712.681 m2/gm respectively; while the laboratory
sample had the value of 779.581 m2/gm.
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26. INFERENCE
• From a pure adsorptive perspective, these numbers
lay down a marker that rice husk is a major untapped
resource in creating an industrially viable product
namely activated carbon for high adsorptive uses.
• Another observation made while performing the
experiment of producing the activated carbon of
coconut husks, is that the carbon made is very light –
thus leading to an inference of it’s particle density
being low. This opens up a use for activated carbon
made from coconut husks as potential cheap, waste
reducing and environmentally friendly option for
industrial and /or laboratory catalyst carriers.
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27. REFERENCES
1. Huiping Zhang, Yiang Lin, Lichun Yang, Preparation of activated carbon
from sawdust by zinc chloride activation, 161-166, 12 May 2010..
2. Arunrat Cheenmatchaya and Sukjit Kungwankunakorn, Preparation of
Activated Carbon Derived from Rice Husk by Simple Carbonization and
Chemical Activation for Using as Gasoline Adsorbent, International
Journal of Environmental Science and Development, Vol. 5, No. 2, April
2014.
3. Ami Cobb, Mikell Warms, Dr. Erwin P. Maurer, Dr. Steven Chiesa, Low-
Tech Coconut Shell Activated Charcoal Production, International Journal
for Service Learning in Engineering, Vol. 7, No. 1, 2012.
4. Hariprasad, Rajeshwari Sivaraj, Aniz Cu, Preparation and characterization
of activated carbon from rice husk, International Research Journal of
Engineering and Technology (IRJET), Vol. 03, Issue: 04 ,Apr-2016.
5. Y. Örküna, N. Karatepea,∗ and R. Yavuzb, Influence of Temperature and
Impregnation Ratio of H3PO4 on the Production of Activated Carbon from
Hazelnut Shell, International Congress on Advances in Applied Physics
and Materials Science,Vol.121, Antalya 2011.
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28. REFERENCES (CONTD.)
6. Materials and methods for production of activated carbons –Zhengrong
Gu, US20140162873A1, June 12, 2014.
7. Douglas K. Stephens, Highly activated carbon from caustic digestion of
rice hull ash and method, US6114280, September 5, 2000.
8. Paul Y. H. Fung, Process for carbonizing wood residues and producing
activated carbon, US6808390B1, October 26, 2004.
9. Electric Muffle Furnace, C.A. Crowley, Popular Mechanics, 67:6, pp. 941-
945, June 1937.
10. http://beggcousland.co.uk/products/gas-cleaning/active-carbon-systems/
- Accessed on 18/10/2016.
11. Test Methods for Activated Carbon – European Council of Chemical
Manufacturer’s Association, April ’86.
12. Gabriela Martucci Couto; Anelise Lima de Abreu Dessimoni; Maria Lúcia
Bianchi; Deise Morone Perígolo; Paulo Fernando Trugilho; Use of
sawdust Eucalyptus sp. in the preparation of activated carbons, February
2012
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