Enhancing CO2 capture with K2CO3-activated carbon derived from peanut shell
Yonghui Xu, Yufei Liu, Wei Zhan, Dingle Zhang, Yiyun Liu, Yi Xu, Zhengshun Wu
Abstract
This study explores the transformation of peanut shells, an abundant agricultural waste, into high-efficiency activated carbon for CO 2 capture using a two-step pyrolysis and K 2 CO 3 activation method. Observations indicated that with an increasing impregnation ratio, the activated carbon demonstrates remarkable improvements in structural properties , achieving specific surface areas and pore volumes of 1150.02 m 2 /g and 0.46 cm 3 /g, respectively. Among the prepared samples, the activated carbon obtained with a peanut shell to K 2 CO 3 impregnation mass ratio of 1:2 exhibits superior CO 2 adsorption capacity at 1 bar, with values of 3.76 mmol/g at 25 °C and 5.70 mmol/g at 0 °C. The CO 2 adsorption isotherms of the activated carbon conform to the Langmuir and Freundlich models. These results demonstrate the potential of this method in addressing environmental concerns, particularly in mitigating CO 2 emissions, and highlight the broader application prospects of biomass-derived activated carbon in environmental management.