Waste phenolic resin derived activated carbon by microwave-assisted KOH activation and application to dye wastewater treatment

Abstract

The waste phenolic resin was utilized as the raw material to prepare activated carbon (AC) used KOH as the activating agent via microwave heating. The phenolic resin was carbonized at 500°C and then performed with a KOH/Char ratio of 4 and microwave power of 700 W for a duration of 15 min. The physic-chemical characteristics of the AC were characterized by N2 adsorption instrument, FTIR, SEM and TEM. The BET surface area and pore volume of AC were found to be 4269 m2/g and 2.396 ml/g, respectively. The activation process to generate such a phenomenally high surface area of the AC has little reported in open literatures and could pave way for preparation adsorbents that are far superior to the currently marketed adsorbents. The methylene blue (MB) was used as the model to assess its suitability to dye wastewater treatment. Towards this, the MB adsorption isotherms were conducted at three different temperatures and tested with different adsorption isotherm models. The adsorption isotherms could be modeled using Langmuir isotherm. While the kinetics could be used the pseudo-second order kinetics to describe. Thermodynamic results demonstrated that the adsorption process was a spontaneous, as well as an endothermic.

Keywords

• activated carbon
• microwave heating
• wastewater treatment
• adsorption