Chlorination of drinking water is a common practice, used by numerous municipalities in the United States (US) to safeguard their water supplies. However, the chlorine used can chemically react with organic components in the drinking water to produce unwanted chlorination by-products. The objective of this investigation was to evaluate the use of granular activated carbon produced from nutshell...

Agricultural by-products represent a considerable quantity of harvested commodity crops. The use of by-products as precursors for the production of widely used adsorbents, such as activated carbons, may impart a value-added component of the overall biomass harvested. Our objective in this paper is to show that flax shive and cotton gin waste can serve as a precursor for activated carbon that ca...

Activated carbons with a high BET surface area and a well-developed porosity have been prepared from pyrolysis of H3PO4-impregnated lignin precipitated from kraft black liquors. Impregnation ratios within the range of 1-3 and activation temperatures of 623-873 K have been used, giving rise to carbons with different porous and surface chemical structure. Increasing the activation temperature and...

The present investigation was undertaken to evaluate the adsorption effectiveness of pecan shell-based granular activated carbons (GACs) in removing metal ions (Cu(2+), Pb(2+), Zn(2+)) commonly found in municipal and industrial wastewater. Pecan shells were activated by phosphoric acid, steam or carbon dioxide activation methods. Metal ion adsorption of shell-based GACs was compared to the meta...

Special attention was paid in this work to the role of surface chemistry in the adsorption of phenol and salicylic acid onto activated carbons. To this end, two commercial activated carbons (granular and powdered) were oxidised using ammonium peroxodisulphate [(NH4)2S2O8] and nitric acid in different concentrations. The structural and chemical properties of the oxidised adsorbents were characte...