Acta Chimica Slovaca (ACS) publishes papers on fundamental and applied aspects of chemistry, biochemistry, chemical technology, chemical engineering and process control, biotechnology and food technology. Welcome are also topics which include chemical aspects of materials, physical chemistry and chemical physics, analytical chemistry, macromolecular chemistry and biomedical engineering.

Preliminary evaluation of resorcinol-formaldehyde carbon gels for water pollutants removal

Muhammad Abbas Ahmad Zaini * a, Seiichiro Yoshida b, Takeshi Mori c, Shin R. Mukai d

Centre of Lipids Engineering & Applied Research, Ibnu-Sina Institute for Scientific & Industrial Research, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
a Faculty of Chemical & Energy Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
b Faculty of Chemical & Energy Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia
c Division of Chemical Process Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, N13W8 Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-8628, Japan
d Division of Chemical Process Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University, N13W8 Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-8628, Japan

E-mail: * abbas@cheme.utm.my

Abstract: The present work was aimed to evaluate the suitability of resorcinol-formaldehyde carbon gels as adsorbent for water pollutants removal. The carbon gels were characterized using N2 adsorption-desorption isotherm for specific surface area, and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) for surface functional groups. Methylene blue and cesium were employed as model water pollutants. Results show that the un-oxidized carbon gel, despite its lower specific surface area (333 m2/g) displayed a 118 mg/g removal of methylene blue, that is higher than 35 mg/g by the oxidized carbon gel (418 m2/g). The evaluation of adsorption kinetics revealed a lower pseudo-first order rate constant of 0.088 h–1 for 10 mg/L methylene blue adsorption. A positive effect of surface oxidation was demonstrated for cesium adsorption. On molar basis, however, the oxidized carbon gel exhibits a selective removal towards methylene blue compared to cesium. Carbon gel is a promising candidate for water pollutants removal, and further treatment needs to be sought to boost its performance.

Keywords: Adsorption, carbon gel, cesium, methylene blue, surface oxidation

Full paper in Portable Document Format: acs_0271.pdf

Acta Chimica Slovaca, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2017, pp. 54—60, DOI: 10.1515/acs-2017-0009