Sorption of PAHs and PCBs to activated carbon: Coal versus biomass-based quality

The addition of activated carbon (AC) is an increasingly popular method for pollutant immobilization, and the AC material can be made of biomass or coal/fossil feedstock. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether there are differences between pollutant sorption to biomass and coal-based AC in the presence and absence of sediment. Through N2 and CO2 adsorption to probe surface area and pore size it was shown that the biomass-based AC had a stronger dominance of narrow pores in the size range 3.5–15 Å than the anthracite-based material. In the absence of sediment, sorption isotherms for the probe compounds pyrene and PCB-101 showed stronger sorption for the biomass-based AC (logarithmic Freundlich coefficients 8.15 for pyrene; 9.91 for PCB-101) than for the anthracite-based one (logarithmic Freundlich coefficients 7.20 and 9.70, respectively). In the presence of sediment, the opposite trend was observed, with the stronger sorption for anthracite-based AC. Thus, the presence of competing and/or pore-blocking sediment constituents reduces sorption to a larger extent for biomass-derived AC (factor of 5 for pyrene to almost 100 for PCB-101) than for anthracite-based AC (no reduction for pyrene to factor of 5 for PCB-101). This difference is tentatively attributed to the difference in pore size distribution, narrow pores being more prone to clogging, and could have implications for remediation feasibility with AC from different sources.

► We studied differences between biomass and coal-based Active Carbon (AC).
► Biomass AC showed a narrower pore size than coal-based AC.
► Clean biomass AC showed a stronger HOC sorption than coal-based AC.
► In the presence of sediment, this trend was reversed.
► The observations be explained by a pore clogging mechanism.