Preparation, Characterization And Application Of High Specific Surface Area Activated Carbon

Activated carbon with abundant porous structure and high specific surface area has been used as an adsorption material. So far, activated carbon has been widely used in chemical industry, environmental protection, food industry, pharmaceutics, catalyst carriers and electrode materials, etc.There are two processes for the preparation of activated carbons, the so-called physical and chemical activation. The specific surface area is generally about 1500m2/g. With the rapid development of science and technology, the manufacturing technique of cells/capacitors with high power capacity was improved greatly. At the same time, the demand for high specific surface area activated carbon is increasing very fast. Especially with the successful application of activated carbon with a specific surface area of more than 2000m2/g in electric double-layer capacitors, the preparation and application of high specific surface area activated carbon has been paid more attention from all over the world. In this paper, the development of the preparation, characterization and application of activated carbon in recent year in the world were reviewed. The preparation, characterization and application of high specific surface area activated carbon for electrode materials and wastewater treatment were investigated. The activation mechanism and the offgas released during the activation process were analyzed and discussed.The high specific surface area activated carbons were prepared by chemical activation with KOH under nitrogen atmosphere from bamboo and coal. The specific surface areas of activated carbons from bamboo and coal are 2996m2/g and 3135m2/g, respectively. The influence of activation temperature, impregnation ratio and activation time on the adsorption capacity were investigated and the optimized parameters were obtained. The experimental results show that it is feasible to choose bamboo and coal as the precursors for the preparation of high specific surface area activated carbons. The optimized parameters for preparation of high specific surface area activated carbon from bamboo were at an activation temperature of 800℃, an impregnation ratio of 1.0 and an activation time of 2h. The optimized parameters for preparation of high specific surface area activated carbon from coal were at an activation temperature of 900℃, an impregnation ratio of 4.0 and a activation time of 1.5h. Nitrogen adsorption isotherms, specific surface area and pore distribution of high specific surface area activated carbon prepared at the optimized parameters were...