Optimization of Activated Carbon Production from Almond Shell for Adsorption of Soluble Oil Contaminants

Activated carbon is a valuable product that has many industrial and environmental applications and therefore it’s production from cheap wastes, is an economic-environmental action. According to the multiplicity of factors that affect adsorption properties of produced activated carbon, the design of experiments via Taguchi method was used to identify the main factors and optimization of activated carbon production. Based on the results, the impregnation ratio and activating reagent have the greatest impact on iodine number of almond shell activated carbon compared to other factors. In this study, activated carbon was produced with iodine number equal to 1331 mg/g, by optimization of chemical activation almond shell. Adsorption experiments showed that adsorption kinetics of dissolved petroleum hydrocarbons on activated carbon derived has followed from second-order reaction. Near to 95% of adsorption was happened during the first 30 minutes of process. Also the adsorption isotherm data were well followed from Freundlich isotherm model.