Novel Insights into Activated Carbon Derived from Municipal Solid Waste for CO2 Uptake: Synthesis, Adsorption Isotherm and Scale-up uri icon

abstract

  • Recently, developing bio-based carbon materials due to the surface chemistry and a large spectrum of pore structures have received much attention. In the present work, a series of activated carbon (AC) adsorbents were synthesized from the compost derived by the mechanical/biological treatment of municipal solid wastes and evaluated regarding their CO2uptake. The AC samples were characterized by sulfuric acid and calcination by N2at 400 and 800 °C. Then, the CO2uptake capacities were evaluated by dynamic breakthrough experiments in a temperature range of 40-100 °C and pressures up to 3 bar. The presented data were properly described by Langmuir model and it was revealed that the CMSW-S-800 sample, treated with sulfuric acid and activated at 800 °C, has the highest CO2uptake capacity with an amount adsorbed around 2.6 mol/kg at 40 °C. In the next step, a mathematical model has been developed to match the experimental dynamic breakthrough data and design a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) cyclic process to evaluate the capacity and potential of the best AC sample for CO2adsorption. The results arising from this work showed a possible route for the application of the compost as a source of activated carbon for the sorption of greenhouse gases.
  • This work was financially supported by: Project POCI-01-0145- FEDER-006984 – Associate Laboratory LSRE-LCM funded by FEDER through COMPETE2020 Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização (POCI) and project “VALORCOMP" (ref.0119_VALORCOMP_2_P), financed through INTERREG V A Spain Portugal (POCTEP) 2014-2020 –by national funds through FCT, and Project NORTE-01-0145- FEDER-000006, supported by Norte’s Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund, also it received financially support from CIMO under UID/AGR/00690/2019. M. Karimi acknowledges PhD research grant awarded under Project: SFRH/BD/140550/2018 by Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal). In addition, Authors would like to appreciate Prof. Helder T. Gomes and Dr. Jose L. Diaz de Tuesta from CIMO for their collaboration in VALORCOMP project.

publication date

  • May 1, 2020