REMOVAL OF TOXIC GASEOUS POLLUTANTS USING ACTIVATED CARBON FROM DATE-PALM AGRICULTURAL WASTE

Controlling air pollution and treating hazardous and toxic gaseous pollutants that are discharged into the environment from various industrial practices are important for public health and for minimizing negative impacts on the environment and ecology. Activated-carbon-based adsorption has been widely and successfully used to curb air pollution and to treat contaminated water; currently thousands of tons of activated carbon are imported into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for the purpose of environmental pollution control. Activated carbon that is typically produced from carbon based raw materials can also be produced from agricultural by-products/wastes. This will help not only to reduce waste but at the same time will provide details on air pollution control using respective activated carbon. The Kingdom is one the largest date fruit producers in the world with millions of palm trees; large amounts of agricultural waste result from regular trimming of these trees and this waste is generally burned. The branches of date palm trees have been used to produce activated carbon, but, to the best of our knowledge, to date this carbon has not been used to adsorb hazardous gaseous emissions. In this proposed research, we will assess the potential of activated carbon derived from date palm-tree branches to treat gas-phase waste containing toluene, sulfur dioxide, ammonia and hydrogen sulfide. We will evaluate the effect of several variables including gas flow rate, gas concentration and gas type on the ability of date-tree-derived activated carbon to remove these pollutants under dynamic flow conditions. The efficiency with which the gas pollutants are removed will be compared to that offered by commercial air-pollution removal techniques. The underlying adsorption process will be modeled using the experimental data collected, i.e., adsorption efficiency, breakthrough time and exhaustion time. As industrial presence in the Kingdom continues to grow, the need for air pollution control will also grow. The outcomes of this proposed work could find application in a variety of industrial settings including wastewater treatment plants, ARAMCO and SABIC facilities.