Potential of activated carbon from waste rubber tire for the adsorption of phenolics: effect of pre-treatment conditions

Vinod Kumar Gupta; Arunima Nayak; Shilpi Agarwal; Inderjeet Tyagi

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2013.11.067

Potential of activated carbon from waste rubber tire for the adsorption of phenolics: effect of pre-treatment conditions

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2014 Mar 1:417:420-30. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2013.11.067. Epub 2013 Dec 4.

Authors

Vinod Kumar Gupta¹, Arunima Nayak², Shilpi Agarwal², Inderjeet Tyagi²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee 247667, India. Electronic address: vinodfcy@gmail.com.
² Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee 247667, India.

PMID: 24407705
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2013.11.067

Abstract

Rubber tire activated carbon modification (RTACMC) and rubber tire activated carbon (RTAC) were prepared from waste rubber tire by microwave assisted chemical treatment and physical heating respectively. A greater improvement in porosity and total pore volume was achieved in RTACMC as compared to that of RTAC. But both have a predominantly mesoporous structure. Under identical operating conditions, an irradiation time of 10 min, chemical impregnation ratio of 1.50 and a microwave power of 600 W resulted in maximizing the efficiency of RTACMC for p-cresol (250 mg/g) at a contact time of 90 min while RTAC showed a 71.43 mg/g adsorption capacity at 150 min. Phenol, due to its higher solubility was adsorbed to a lesser extent by both adsorbents. Physical nature of interactions, pore diffusion mechanism and exothermicity of the adsorption process was operative in both adsorbents. The outcomes support the feasibility of preparing high quality activated carbon from waste rubber tire by microwave assisted chemical activation.

Keywords: Adsorption; Microwave cum chemical activation; Phenol; Waste rubber tire; p-Cresol.