Abstract
Bamboo trees are one of the fastest growing trees in tropical rainforests around the world, they have various uses ranging from construction to fly ash generation used in oil and gas cementing, to development of activated carbon which is one of the latest uses of bamboo trees. This paper focuses on development of activated carbon from bamboo trees for carbon capture and sequestration. The need for improved air quality becomes imperative as the SDG Goal 12 and SDG Goal13 implies. One of the major greenhouse gases is CO2 which accounts for over 80% of greenhouse gases in the environment. Eliminating the greenhouse gases without adding another pollutant to the environment is highly sought after in the 21st century. Bamboo trees are mostly seen as agricultural waste with the advent of scaffolding and other support systems being in the construction industry. Instead of burning bamboo trees or using them for cooking in the local communities which in turn generates CO2 and fly ash, an alternative was considered in this research work, which is the usage of bamboo trees to generate activated, moderately porous and high surface area carbon for extracting CO2 from various CO2 discharge sources atmosphere and for water purification. This paper focuses on the quality testing of activated carbon that can effectively absorb CO2. The porosity, pore volume, bulk volume, and BET surface area were measured. The porosity of the activated carbon is 27%, BET surface area as 1260m²/g. Fixed carbon was 11.7%, Volatility 73%, ash content 1.7%.
SYNTHESIS OF HIGH SURFACE AREA ACTIVATED CARBON XEROGEL FROM RESORCINOL-FORMALDEHYDE RESIN FOR CO2 ADSORPTION AND SEPARATION