Increasing urbanization and industrialization has recognizable impact on environmental contaminations, especially contamination of surface groundwater resources with surfactants, heavy metals, dyes and other compounds. Adsorption is considered as the most competitive method for removal of those contaminants from wastewater, due to its simplicity and easy handling nature. Recently, biochar derived from biomass waste through (hydro)thermal treatments has been suggested as a green cost-effective adsorbent. In comparison with pyrolysis and hydrothermal carbonization, gasification could achieve the production of biochar as well as the energy recovery, which enhances the economic and environmental feasibility of biochar production system. In this work, gasification biochar (or carbon residue from biomass/solid waste gasification)– which has a distinctive structure, large surface area, low density and high chemical resistance – has been used as adsorbent as well as further developed into activated carbon and used for contaminants removal from wastewater. For example, we used steam activation to convert biochar (i.e. by-products from woody biomass gasification) into activated carbon with high surface area of 776.46 m<sup>2</sup>/g. The obtained activated carbons exhibited the high adsorption capability (i.e. 189.83 mg/g), which is mainly attributed to the higher surface area and the abundance of hydroxyl (–OH) and carboxyl (–COOH) groups on the activated carbon surface [T. Maneerung et al., Bioresource Technology 200 (2016) 350]. Additionally, we successfully used biochar (surface area 342.26 m<sup>2</sup>/g without further activation) for the removal of artificial sweetener (AS, an emerging contaminant) from water via adsorption, which was postulated to be governed by electrostatic interaction and specific interaction between the AS molecules and biochar surface [W.C. Ng et al., Energy 139 (2017) 732-742].

Gasification-derived biochar adsorbents for wastewater treatment and emerging contaminants removal

255th National Meeting (2018)

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