Production of activated carbon with large specific surface area from a sawdust mixed with a nitrogen compound by chemical activation using potassium carbonate

In this paper, the sawdust was used as the starting material. A urea or a melamine was added to sawdust as the nitrogen compound, and K2CO3 was added to this mixture as an activation reagent. We tried to produce the activated carbon with large specific surface area from this mixture by chemical activation. The result was that we succeeded in production of the activated carbon with the large specific surface area of about 3000 m2/g. Especially, the mesopore volume was well developed when a melamine was used as the nitrogen compound. It was concluded that the activated carbon with large specific surface area can be produced even from the starting material with low nitrogen content like the sawdust by adding the nitrogen compound. This was due to the modified carbonization behaviour by the interaction between the sawdust, the added nitrogen compound and K2CO3. Consequently, the disordered carbon layer structure was formed and the specific surface area and the pore volume were large.