Techno-Economic Assessment and Critical Properties Tuning of Activated Carbons from Pyrolyzed Sugarcane Bagasse

Sugarcane bagasse is an abundant agroindustrial bioresource from production of ethanol and sugar, which could be used as raw material to obtain advanced biofuels, electric energy, among other high added-value green products in biorefineries. This work shed light on necessary integration of state-of-art characterization of critical physico-chemical properties with techno-economic aspects of activated carbons from sugarcane bagasse. Activated carbons were produced by thermochemical activation using various ratios of NaOH and pyrolyzed bagasse. Impacts of tuning these materials critical properties such as process yield, apparent density, surface oxidation states and textural characteristics by the activation conditions are discussed addressing their applicability as adsorbents for water and air decontamination treatment. Moreover, this study was concisely bound to techno-economic assessment of full-scale plants which pointed to pyrolyzed bagasse being an economically-competitive alternative raw material to produce activated carbons at broad range of activation conditions that would enable this sustainable technology.