Solid chars were prepared from coconut shell at different carbonization temperatures in the range from 250-750°C and gasified in a thermogravimetric analyzer under the atmosphere of carbon dioxide at 850 o C. The kinetic analysis showed an accelerating increasing of char conversion with reaction time, indicating an increase in the instantaneous gasification rate as the reaction proceeded. Four kinetic models for gas-solid reactions including, the volume-reaction model (VRM), the shrinking-core model (SCM), the random-pore model (RPM) and the modified volume-reaction model (MVRM) were tested against the measured kinetic data and the MVRM was found to predict the gasification kinetics most accurately. The char reactivity index was computed from the apparent rate constant of the MVRM and used to assess the reactivity of char towards carbon dioxide gasification. It was found that the char reactivity index decreased with increasing carbonization temperature, with the char produced at the lowest temperature of 250°C giving the highest reactivity. Surface area of activated carbon, produced from the gasification of various chars at 850°C for 60 and 120 min, correlated well with the char reactivity index, showing a proportional increasing of surface area with increasing reactivity index and passing through a maximum near the reactivity index of 0.02 min-1 .

The uptake data of CO2 adsorption at 273 K by coconut shell chars prepared at various carbonization temperatures from 250 to 550°C were used for characterizing pore texture of chars as well as the analysis of CO2 adsorption kinetics. The equilibrium isotherms were used to determine the porous texture of chars, employing the DR equation and GCMC simulation. It was found that all the test chars contain micropores of a size range from 0.8 to 2.2 nm with the pore size distribution becoming wider for char prepared at a higher carbonization temperature. Porous properties of chars, including surface area, total pore volume, and the average pore size, appear to increase with an increasing carbonization temperature. The analysis of CO2 uptake during the transient measurement of isotherms revealed that the kinetics of CO2 adsorption is governed by the internal diffusional transport of the adsorptive molecules. The effective pore diffusivity characterizing this transport process increases with increasing CO2 loading and passes through a maximum at a certain loading. This maximum pore diffusivity shifts to a higher value as the carbonization temperature is increased. A semiempirical equation was developed to correlate the effective pore diffusivity of CO2 with the equilibrium adsorption loading and its predictive capability is satisfactory.