Textural and chemical properties of adsorbent prepared from palm shell by phosphoric acid activation

Textural and chemical characterisations of adsorbent prepared from palm shell, an abundantly available carbonaceous solid waste from palm oil processing mills in some tropical countries, by phosphoric acid (H3PO4) activation were carried out in this paper. The effects of activation temperature and H3PO4 impregnation on the textural and chemical properties of the adsorbent were investigated. Gas-phase adsorption of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ammonia (NH3) onto the palm shell adsorbents was studied. The discrepancies of adsorptive capacity between the adsorbent with H3PO4 impregnation and that by thermal activation, which had equivalent BET surface areas, were due to the presence of surface functional groups on the chemically activated samples, as detected by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The mechanism of H3PO4 activation of palm shell for the evolution of porosity was also proposed.