With the goal of combining the advantages of ball-milling and biochar/hydrochar technologies, a variety of ball-milled biochars (BMBCs) were synthesized, characterized, and tested for contaminant removal from aqueous solution. Ball milling increased only the external surface area of low temperature biochars, but still dramatically enhanced their ability to sorb aqueous contaminants. For higher temperature biochars with relatively low surface area, ball milling increased both external and internal surface area. Measurements of pH, zeta potential, stability, and a Boehm titration demonstrated that ball milling also added oxygen-containing functional groups (e.g., carboxyl and hydroxyl) to biochar’s surface. With these changes, all the BMBCs showed much high contaminant adsorption capacities than unmilled biochars. They also displayed faster adsorption kinetics, likely due to an increase in rates of intra-particle diffusion. Ball milling thus has great potential to increase the efficiency and economic value of environmentally friendly biochars.<br/>

Effects of ball milling on the physicochemical and adsorption properties of biochar

255th National Meeting (2018)

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