Characteristics of activated carbon derived from rice bran residues and its application as a catalyst support

Abstract

This research focuses on investigation of the characteristics of activated carbons from deoil rice bran by using chemical activation (ZnCl[subscript 2] and H[subscript 3]PO[subscript 4] as activating agent) at different temperatures and performance of activated carbon used as catalyst support for cobalt catalyst in CO[subscript 2] hydrogenation. It was found that the high surface area of activated carbon obtains from rice bran residues can be achieved by using chemical activation that the ZnCl[subscript 2] activation, which was higher than that obtained by H[subscript 3]PO[subscript 4] activation. In addition, the activated carbons for both H[subscript 3]PO[subscript 4] and ZnCl[subscript 2] activations exhibited a combination of mostly microporous and partly mesoporous structure. Then, these activated carbons were used as catalyst support for cobalt catalyst in CO[subscript 2] hydrogenation. It was found that the performance obtained from using these activated carbons as supports of Co catalysts are poor probably due to amounts of sulfur impurity left from using H[subscript 2]SO[subscript 4] for treating at the beginning for preparation of activated carbon.