Preparation of activated carbon from residues coffee by physical activation: using Response surface methodology

The intention of this work is to realize a planned study of the preparation conditions of the activated carbon from residues coffee based physical activation under steam (CAC). The influence of activation temperature, activation time, and heating rate (HR) on the carbon yield, iodine number and methylene blue (MB) adsorption capacity of such carbons were studied. Based on a central composite design (CCD) was used to optimize the preparation conditions of activated carbons from residues coffee. For CAC, an optimum condition of 732.5 °C activation temperature, 57.68 min activation time and 25.11°C/min heating rate gave 50.29 % yield, 608.50 mg/g iodine number and 221.98 mg/g MB uptake. The optimum activated carbon showed a BET surface area of 772.49 m2/g and average pore 24.7 Å. It was observed that the experimental values obtained were in good agreement with the values predicted from the models, with relatively small errors between the predicted and the actual values.