MOSCOW, May 24.A technique based on two-stage thermal conversion will help to obtain technical activated carbon from industrial waste, scientists of the Tomsk Polytechnic University believe. According to them, with the help of the developed technology, it will be possible to provide the industry with activated carbon with minimal costs for its production. This was reported in the press service of the university.
One of the key functions in the systems of treatment facilities is performed by technical activated carbon. This is a sorbent, that is, it absorbs certain pollutants, and most often this substance is used for wastewater treatment, according to Tomsk Polytechnic University.
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Nevertheless, most of the material is still purchased from abroad, as the production process in especially large volumes remains resource-intensive. Therefore, the specialists of the university proposed their solution for the provision of technical activated carbon for production.
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“We are conducting a cycle of applied research in search of ways to process different types of waste into useful products. In this case, the work was carried out with industrial waste in bulk form — rubber crumb, sawdust, nut shells, and so on. From them, we managed to learn how to obtain technical activated carbon, ”concretized the associate professor of the scientific and educational center I.N. Butakov TPU Konstantin Slyusarsky.
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Among the main advantages of the technological solution, the expert named insignificant resource costs, ease of implementation and environmental friendliness. The recycling process does not emit carbon dioxide, so this technology is safe for the environment.
It is based on a two-stage thermal conversion, which is carried out on an installation assembled at the university. At the first stage, the feedstock continuously enters the pyrolysis reaction chamber and is heated to a temperature of 700 degrees Celsius, Slyusarsky added.
As a result, liquid hydrocarbons, combustible gases and a carbon residue, semi-coke, appear. The latter is continuously reloaded into a smaller reactor with an operating temperature of up to 1000 degrees Celsius. In it, when exposed to carbon dioxide or superheated steam, activated carbon is formed.
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«However, in addition to it, we get two more useful products — liquid hydrocarbons and hydrogen-enriched synthesis gas. The first can be used in the oil refining industry and the fuel and energy complex, and the second can be used in the technological cycle itself to compensate for energy costs», the expert continued.
He drew attention to the fact that thermal conversion processes have been used before, but the efficiency of the proposed technology is ensured by a number of author's solutions of university specialists. Among these are temperature changes, the use of additional agents for the reaction, the intensification of heat transfer, and others.
«Scaling the technology will not be difficult. In the installation we have created, industrial samples are already responsible for the low-temperature part of the process — equipment that is already available at enterprises. For widespread use of our methodology, it will only be necessary to create a high-temperature unit and a raw material reloading unit, and this is an absolutely solvable engineering problem,” the researcher added. obtaining, Slyusarsky suggested.
The study was conducted by Tomsk Polytechnic University with the support of the Priority 2030 program of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science.