Effect of Organic Sulfide in Precursors on the Pore Structure of High‐Surface Area Activated Carbons

Abstract

Analogous precursors in the presence of sulfide dibenzothiophene (DBT) were employed to prepare high-surface area activated carbons (HAC) by KOH chemical activation, in order to investigate the influence of the DBT content on the pore structure of the resultant HAC. The results indicate that the DBT in the precursor can react with and consume a certain amount of the activation agent KOH, thus reducing the actual KOH/coke ratio, which imposes a clear negative effect on the pore structure development. However, regardless of how high the DBT content is in the precursor, no residual sulfur is found in the obtained HAC. The HAC with developed porosity can also be achieved by just increasing the KOH dosage to compensate for the amount consumed in the DBT reaction during the activation process, which provides a high value-added utilization way for organic sulfur-containing minerals.

Influence of Surface Properties and Pore Structure of High Surface Activated Carbon on Adsorption Capacity of Dibenzothiophene

“…Recently, many methods have been made to develop adsorbents for desulfurization of fuels, such as activated carbons [11], mixed metal oxides [14], clays [15]and zeolite-based materials [16]. Activated carbons have been used in a wide range for desulfurization of liquid hydrocarbon fuels [6,7,11,17], owing to their well-developed pore structure, large internal surface area, cheap and easy regeneration [18]. The role of activated carbon desulfurization mainly depends its rich acidic functional groups on the surface and well-developed microporous structure [6,19,20].…”