Effect of superfine pulverization of powdered activated carbon on adsorption of carbamazepine in natural source waters.

Abstract The purpose of this study is to investigate adsorptive removal of carbamazepine from natural source waters by superfine pulverized powdered activated carbon. Superfine pulverization is becoming an increasingly attractive approach to decrease the diffusion path of a target adsorbate molecule and improve the overall the kinetics of activated carbon adsorption. Here we report the impact of pulverization on powdered activated carbon characteristics, and carbamazepine adsorption behavior in distilled and deionized water and natural organic matter solutions. The superfine pulverization decreased the particle size of activated carbon by 50 folds and the specific surface area by 24%. In addition, the micropore volume of the activated carbon decreased from 0.23 cm3/g to 0.14 cm3/g, while mesopore and macropore volumes increased from 0.15 cm3/g and 0.11 cm3/g to 0.18 cm3/g and 0.48 cm3/g, respectively. In terms of surface chemistry, the oxygen and iron contents of the activated carbon increased notably after pulverization. Despite the decrease in surface area and increase in surface polarity, the pulverization improved the adsorption kinetics especially for short contact times i.e., 3). Therefore, superfine pulverization of PAC can serve as a promising approach to remove micropollutants from natural source waters with a kinetic advantage.