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History, Method of Production, Structure and

Applications of Activated Carbon
Sadashiv Bubanale Dr. M. Shivashankar
Department of Mechanical Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering
Siddaganga Institute of Technology Siddaganga Institute of Technology
Tumkur, India Tumkur, India

Abstract— The process of adsorption is one of the physical Kehl et al [1793] discovered that the charcoal prepared from
method for separation of dissolved pollutants from the effluent. the animal tissue can be used in color removal from the
Activated carbon is the good adsorbent that can be used in both aqueous solution.
liquid and gaseous phase adsorption also used as catalyst or In 1794 one of the English sugar company used wood derived
catalyst support. Adsorbent materials are porous and
charcoal for the decolorization of sugar syrup.
adsorption takes place on the inside walls of pore particles.
From last few years, use of activated carbon has increased In 19th century
greatly. This review article purpose is to give the knowledge of Delessert et al [1805] demonstrated use of charcoal for sugar-
how activated carbon uses came from historic days and also beet liquor decolorization.
then how it is improving day by day. With this it gives the idea Bussy et al [1822] prepared first activated carbon prepared
of production of activated carbon by different methods. The from combination of physical and chemical activation by
methods include physical activation and chemical activation. heating blood with potash. It has 50 times more effective than
Adsorption capacity of activated carbon mainly depends on the bone char.
structure of activated carbon. Stenhouse et al [1856] prepared char by heating flour, tar and
magnesium carbonate mixture.
Keywords— Activated Carbon, Adsorption, Surface area
Lipscombe et al [1862] prepared carbon for purification of
portable water.
I. INTRODUCTION Hunter et al [1865] prepared activated carbon from coconut
The carbon element in the carbon material has a unique shell and studied adsorption of gases on it.
bonding with itself and other elements. Based on Winser et al [1868] prepared activated carbon from paper
hybridization of carbon atoms, the allotropic forms of carbon mill waste and phosphate heating.
are diamond, graphite, and fullerenes [Delhaes 1998]. Major In 20th century
carbons exhibit allotropic form. Based on crystallographic Ostrejko et al [1900] developed commercial activated carbon
order in third direction, the allotropic form of graphite through two processes (a) Use of metal chlorides before
classified into graphitic and non-graphitic carbons [Franklin carbonization. (b) Using carbon dioxide selective oxidation of
1951]. Non-graphitic carbon is divided into non-graphitizable charcoal at high temperature.
and graphitizable carbons. By high temperature treatment if In 1911 using Ostrejko method first activated carbon
non-graphitic carbon converts into graphitic carbon that is produced industrially and marketed with the trade name
called graphitizable carbon. Epoint for sugar refinery industries as decolorizer.
II. ACTIVATED CARBON Wunch et al [1913] studied decolorizing capacity of Epoint
Activated charcoal is a non-graphitic and non-graphitizable was increased when heated with zinc chloride.
carbon having highly disordered microstructure. It has high In 1914-1918 due to first world war introduction of
adsorption capacity because of it high surface area and poisonous gas was affecting respiration in military. For this
porosity. activated carbon prepared from coconut shell was developed.
Kubelka et al [1931] studied sorption phenomenon on
A. Historical background of activated carbon activated carbon by the use of capillary condensation
In olden days (1500 B.C) activated charcoal has been used mechanism.
for medicinal application. Then adsorption of activated
carbon was discovered in 1773 by Scheele. B. Preparation of activated carbon
Historical production and use of activated carbon has For the preparation of activated carbon, the raw material used
explained below: are biomass, forestry and agricultural residue. The precursor
In 18th century used must be rich in carbon content for the preparation of
Scheele et al [1773] recognized the adsorptive power of activated carbon [Prahas et al 2008]. Activated carbon can be
charcoal by the use of adsorption of gases on charcoal produced through two processes (1) Physical activation (2)
surface. Chemical activation [Bansal et al 1988].
Lowitz et al [1785] studied the use of charcoal in various
aqueous solution decolorization. This is the first application
of charcoal in liquid phase.

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1) Physical activation: forms during the carbonization and further develops during
It involves two steps in physical activation. First step is to activation. All activated carbons have porous structure. The
carbonization of raw material, second step is to activation of pore system of activated carbon are different types and
carbonized charcoal at high temperature in the presence of individual pore may vary in both size and shape. Activated
oxidation agent steam, carbon dioxide and air. Carbonization carbons are having pores from less than nanometer to
takes place in the range of 400-800 , and temperature of thousand nanometers. Pores are classified on their average
activation ranges from 800-1000 . Physical activating agent width. Average width is the distance between the walls of slit
and raw material used in production of activated carbon is shaped pore or the radius of a cylindrical pore. Conventional
listed in table-1. classification is proposed by (Dubinin et al 1960) and it is
officially adopted by International Union of Pure and Applied
Table-1: Physical activating agent with raw materials used in Chemistry (IUPAC). The typical pore size distribution is
production of activated carbon. shown in figure-1.
Activating Material Source
agent Table-3: Classification of pore
Air Olive tree wood, Almond Ould-Idriss et al 2011, Type of Pore Width
tree pruning Ganan et al 2006, Micro 2 nm
Aworn et al 2009,
CO2 Corncob, Coconut shells, Gue atal 2009, Meso 2-50 nm
Sawdust, rice husk, Prakash kumar et al Macro 50 nm
Steam 2006, Zhang et al
2011

2) Chemical activation
Preparation of activated carbon from chemical method
requires only one step, both carbonization and activation
takes place in single step only. The precursor is mixed with
the chemical agent and kept for activation at high
temperature. The chemical agent acts as an oxidant and
dehydrating agent. Chemical activation has more
advantageous than physical activation that include (1) Single
activation step (2) Lower activation temperature < 800 . (3)
Shorter activation times (4) Higher yield (5) Good porous
characteristics [Nowicki et al 2006]. The most used chemical
agent for activation are KOH, K2CO3, ZnCl2, H3PO4.
Chemical activating agent and raw material used in
production of activated carbon is listed in table-2.

Table-2: Chemical activating agent with raw materials used Figure-1: Graphical representation of pore structure on activated
in production of activated carbon. carbon
Activating Material Source 2) Crystalline structure
agent During carbonization, microcrystalline structure of activated
KOH Olive seed, petroleum coke, Stavropoulos and carbo develops. Activated carbon structure is different from
Rice straw, Zabaniotou 2005, Kawano
et al 2008, Basta et al that of graphite with respect to the interlayer spacing. In
2009. graphite interlayer spacing is 0.335 nm and in activated
K2CO3 cotton stalk, walnut shell. Deng et al 2010, Hayashi carbon is 0.34 to 0.35 nm. Activated carbons are classified
et al 2002. into two types, based on graphitizing ability, these are
Tamarind wood, nut shell,
ZnCl2 coconut shell, Acharya et al 2009, graphitizing and non-graphitizing carbons. In graphitizing
Ahmadpur and do 1997, carbon, it contains number of graphene layers oriented
Azevedo et al 2007, parallel to each other. The carbon obtained was delicate due
Cotton stalk, date pits Deng et al 2010, Girgis et to the weak cross linking between the neighbor micro-
H3PO4 al 2002,
crystallites and had a less developed porous structure. The
non-graphitizing carbons are hard due to strong cross linking
C. Structure of Activated Carbon between crystallites show well developed micro pores
Adsorption capacity of activated carbon mainly depends structure (Franklin 1951, Jenkins and kawamura 1976). The
on the structure of activated carbon formation of non-graphitizing structure with strong cross-
links is promoted by the presence of associated oxygen or by
1) Porous structure Activated Carbon an insufficiency of hydrogen in the original raw material. The
The higher adsorption capacity of activated carbon mainly schematic representations of the structures of graphitizing
depends on the porous characteristics such as pore volume, and non-graphitizing carbons are shown in figure-2.
pore size distribution, and surface area. Activated carbon
contains up to 15% of ash content in the form of mineral
matter (Bansal et al 1988). Porous structure of activated carbo

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