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Facile preparation of oxygen-rich activated carbon from petroleum coke for enhancing methylene blue adsorption

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Abstract

The oxygen-rich activated carbon (AC) was facilely developed using petroleum coke as a raw material by KOH activation under the rapid heating rate. The porosity and surface chemistry of ACs prepared under different heating rates were characterized and their adsorption properties for methylene blue (MB) were investigated. The results showed that the AC5 prepared under the heating rate of 5 °C min−1 had the highest surface area compared with the AC10, AC15 or AC20, while the AC20 prepared under the heating rate of 20 °C min−1 consisted of the highest oxygen content and most –OH functional group compares with the other ACs. These indicated that rapid heating rate was against the formation of more developed porosity, however, it was beneficial to producing more oxygen functional groups. As to MB adsorption, AC15 exhibited the maximum adsorption capacity for MB of 884 mg g−1 due to high surface area of 2803 m2 g−1 and high oxygen content of 23.27%. Moreover, despite the fact that AC20 had much lower surface area than the AC5, the AC20 showed higher MB adsorption capacity than the AC5. This was because the AC20 has the highest content of –OH, which was a positive impetus for MB adsorption. Therefore, rapid heating rate was an effective and simple approach to preparing the oxygen-rich ACs for improving the adsorption capacity of MB.

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Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the support from Jining Carbon Group Co., Ltd., China, for providing the petroleum coke.

Funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation for Young Scientists of China (Grant Nos. 51702094 and 21605009). And this research was financially supported by fund from Key Laboratory of Hubei Province for Coal Conversion and New Carbon Materials (Wuhan University of Science and Technology) (Grant WKD201908).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, Hunan, China

    Wei Wu, Xiaxiang Zhang, Jianxiao Yang & Xuanke Li

  2. Hunan Province Key Laboratory for Advanced Carbon Materials and Applied Technology, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, Hunan, China

    Jianxiao Yang & Xuanke Li

  3. School of Chemistry and Food Engineering, Changsha University of Science and Technology, Changsha, 410114, Hunan, China

    Jun Li

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  1. Wei Wu
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  2. Xiaxiang Zhang
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  4. Jun Li
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  5. Xuanke Li
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Contributions

JY conceived and designed the experiments; WW, XZ and JY performed the experiments; WW, JY, and XL analyzed the data; JL, JY and XL reagents/materials/analysis tools; WW and JY wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Jianxiao Yang.

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Wu, W., Zhang, X., Yang, J. et al. Facile preparation of oxygen-rich activated carbon from petroleum coke for enhancing methylene blue adsorption. Carbon Lett. 30, 627–636 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42823-020-00134-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42823-020-00134-0

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