Abstract
Several Stream of agricultural residue are generated during agricultural activity. Activated carbon is a highly porous carbon material which was known to have good adsorption capacity. Rice husk, due to its high cellulose and lignin content, can be used to prepare activated carbon. Potential of rice husk was studied for production of highly surfaced area activated carbon. The activated carbons were prepared via chemical activation with phosphoric acid and zinc chloride to identify the most suitable activating agent. The obtained activated carbons were characterized on the basis of scanning electron microscopy, BET surface area and energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS). Phosphoric acid activation produced activated carbon with highest porosity and surface area (427.154m2/g) compared to that by zinc chloride activation. Carbon was the most dominant element observed in the prepared activated carbons with highest percentage of 85.67 % been shown by phosphoric acid activation.
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