Preparation of activated carbon from paper mill sludge by KOH-activation

The purpose of this study is the preparation of activated carbon using paper mill sludge collected from biological wastewater treatment plant. The char produced from pyrolysis of paper mill sludge was chemically activated with potassium hydroxide. A systematic investigation of the effect of activation agent ratio, activation temperature and time on the properties of the char was carried out in a rotary kiln reactor. The chemically activated carbons were characterized by measuring iodine and methylene blue number and specific surface area. The activated carbon prepared from char of paper mill sludge in this study had maximum iodine and methylene blue number of 726.0 mg/g and 152.0 mg/g, and specific surface area of 1,002.0 m2/g, respectively. The result of estimation on adsorption capacities of metals, the Freundlich isotherms, yields a fairly good fit to the adsorption data, indicating a monolayer adsorption of metals onto activated carbon prepared from char of paper mill sludge using a potassium hydroxide as the activating agents.