Annealing effect on the particle size and chemical composition of activated carbon obtained from vacuum furnace of teak sawdust

Abstract

Activated carbon was produced from sawdust by using physical method in a high temperature vacuum furnace without additional chemical. Fast pyrolysis process was carried out prior in fluidized a bed furnace to produce char before activation process. Experiments were conducted to investigate the influence of various process parameters such as particle size, activation temperature and activation time on the quality of the activated carbon. In addition, the chemical composition studies were done by using x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy. The crystallite sizes were calculated by using Scherer equation based on x-ray diffraction (XRD) spectroscopy data. The pyrolysis temperature and time were varied from 600°C to 900°C and from 3 hours to 6 hours, respectively. The particle size of activated carbon was increase with increasing temperature. The composition and crystallite size of the prepared activated carbon was compared with the non-activated carbon. The results indicated that the teak sawdust carbon could be employed as a low cost alternative to produce commercial activated carbon.