STUDIES ON THE PRODUCTION CONDITIONS AND APPLICATIONS OF THE ACTIVATED CARBON FIBERS WITH PHOSPORIC ACID ACTIVATION

The production conditions and structures of the activated carbon fibers activated with phosphoric acid, and their applications for recovery of precious metals and removal of sulfur containing compounds from petroleum were investigated. The experimental results indicated that the surface area of products greatly increases while their yield slightly increases with rising the concentration of impregnating phosphoric acid. However, the strength of fibers will obviously decrease if the concentration of phosphoric acid used is over 35?%. In industrial scale production, the optimum activation temperature is 400?℃. The general produced fibers have abundant micro pores with pore diameter of 0.55?nm ～0.66?nm. The products present high adsorption capacity and recovery efficiency when they were applied to the recovery of silver and palladium from waste plating bath solution. For the products further treated with dilute alkali and impregnated with cobalt compounds, their adsorption capacity for mercaptan from petroleum is as high as that of commercial PAN activated carbon fiber activated with steam after same treatment.