Author(s)

Jie Guan, Mengli Zhao, Min Xu, Shuai Chen, Hongcheng Wu, Jiankang Luo and Keying Zhu

Corresponding Author

Min Xu

ABSTRACT

Activated carbon is inactivated due to pore blockage in the process of using. Modification of activated carbon to improve adsorption capacity is a hot research issue.By using the method of impregnation modification with acid and alkali, the effect of different concentrations of acid and alkali on the physicochemical properties of activated carbon and toluene adsorption performance.The results showed that the BET specific surface area, micropore area and pore volume of activated carbon were increased by both acid and base modification.Acid modification increased the number of surface acidic functional groups, while alkali modification showed the opposite change.With the increase of acid-base concentration, the saturated adsorption capacity increased first and then decreased, with the maximum of 80.63 mg· g-1 and 74.21 mg · g-1.The saturation time of penetration and adsorption is 20 min and 260 min after modification with 15% nitric acid, and 15 min and 240 min after modification with 10% sodium hydroxide.

KEYWORDS

Waste activated carbon, toluene, acid and base modification, saturated adsorption capacity