Development and characterization of activated carbon derived from bacterial cellulose

Abstract

Bacterial cellulose (BC) was investigated as a novel material for preparing activated carbons. BC was dried by heating and it was carbonized with a chemical activation process using phosphoric acid (H₃PO₄) as an activating agent at different temperatures (400, 500 and 600 °C). The properties of the activated carbons were characterized such as chemical property, structure, pore size, thermal property by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), N₂ -physisorption (BET), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) , thermal gravimetric (TGA). The obtained BC activated carbons at carbonization temperature of 500 °C (BC-AC500) showed maximum BET surface area (1,734 m2/g) with mesoporous structure (2.33 nm) and large pore volume (1.01 cm3/g). The adsorption capacity was evaluated by using as adsorbent for the adsorption of methylene blue (MB). The equilibrium adsorption data were analyzed by the Langmuir, Freundlich, and Redlich-Peterson isotherm models. The results showed that the Redlich-Peterson model was found to be most fitted to the equilibrium data with correlation coefficient (R²) value of 1.000. The maximum adsorption capacity (qm) was 505.8 mg/g. The experimental results indicated that the BC activated carbon has the potential to be used as an effective adsorbent. Besides, BC and BC activated carbon has been further developed as catalyst supports. A novel catalyst of Al/BC was developed by soaking purified BC hydrogel in aluminum nitrate aqueous solution, dehydration and calcination. The Al/BC catalyst has many promising properties as catalyst in ethanol dehydration, such as good metal dispersion, high chemical and thermal stabilities. The high yield of diethyl ether at ~ 42 % can be produced from ethanol at 200 °C with the selectivity of almost 100% by using Al/BC as catalyst in ethanol dehydration. In addition, BC activated carbon is continuously developed and applied as acid catalyst in the ethanol dehydration reaction at the temperature from 200-400 °C.