Synthesis of magnetic activated carbons from industrial waste

Abstract

The application of magnetic particle technology has shown great potential to solve prob-lems in advanced technological areas/fields. Materi-als which exhibit superparamagnetic behavior at room temperature are particularly interesting be-cause, among other applications, they are able to adsorb molecules of interest from liquid or gaseous streams and could be separated through the use of a magnetic field. In this work, magnetic activated carbons (MACs) were prepared by the deposition of a magnetic phase onto the porous structure of an activated carbon (AC) obtained from industrial waste (peach stones). Different methods to introduce the magnetic phase onto the porous matrix were used. The varia-tion on the textural properties of MAC in contrast with the corresponding AC, was evaluated from ad-sorption of nitrogen at 77K studies. The magnetic phase was identified by XRD and the surface chemi-cal composition by EDS. The behavior of MACs under a variable external magnetic field (hysteresis cycle) and under a fixed external magnetic field, was analized.