Quantitative Characterization of Activated Carbon from Cow, Donkey, Chicken and Horse Bones from Ezzangbo in Ebonyi State, Nigeria

Abstract

Animal bones have been used to produce carbon char for quality assessment of activated carbon over non activated carbon (used as sample control) as influenced by method of activations (acid and heat). In this study samples analyzed were carbonized in a closed crucible at 400°C and ground into powder after cooling. 200g of each of the crushed samples was activated using 250ml of 2 M Hydrochloric acid for one hour at 80°C and another 200g was activated by thermal method at 120°C for 3 hours. To obtain the optimum weight lost of the carbons, the carbonization period was varied from 0.5-3hours. From the result, increase in carbonization time caused an appreciable increase in the percentage weight loss, this reached a maximum value at a carbonization time of 2.5 hours for both carbon samples at a corresponding percentage weight lost of 63%, 58%, 54% and 62% for cow, donkey, chicken and horse bones respectively. The percentage of carbon yield of cow, donkey, chicken and horse bones upon acid activation are in increasing order of cow (48.92%) > horse (48.64%) > donkey (46.34%) > chicken (44.80%) bones and horse (37.03%) > cow (36.21) > donkey (34.96%) > chicken (30.18%) upon heat activation. Among the bone samples, chicken bone has the least ash content of 12.84%, 11.05% and 15.84% for acid, heat and non-activated samples respectively. The difference in bulk densities of acid activated and heat activated carbons are infinitesimal. The order of increasing bulk densities is cow (0.80g/m3) > donkey (0.78g/m3) = horse (0.78g/m3) > chicken (0.49g/m3). The heat activated carbons shows higher percentage of hardness than the acid activated and non-activated carbons. This study indicated that activated carbons from Cow, Donkey, Chicken and Horse are effective as adsorbents with those obtained from chicken having better features of adsorbents.