Activated carbon paper as ethylene adsorber

Abstract The use of activated carbon with KMnO4 activators incorporated on the paper matrix is carried out in this research. Three methods of activated carbon incorporation on paper are carried out to evaluate the paper’s physical parameters and adsorption ability to ethylene. The paper’s physical parameters include grammage, bursting strength, Ring Crush Test (RCT), moisture content, water absorption (Cobb60), and paper microstructures using SEM. Evaluation of the performance of activated carbon paper nanopores as ethylene adsorbent is conducted using GC. The treatment of activated carbon nanopores on non-wood paper causes grammage to increase, but RCT and paper bursting strength decrease. The incorporation of nanopore-activated carbon by the mixing method has produced papers with activated carbon particles spread evenly inside the pulp fibers of the paper. Activated carbon paper with the best adsorption capacity is bamboo+KMnO4&mixing with an adsorption capacity of 1,348 ppm and ethylene amount of 88.58 %. Concentration equilibrium is reached in the 25th minute. The non-linear pseudo-first-order absorbent kinetics model is an appropriate model to describe the equilibrium capacity of ethylene entrant (qe) by nanopore-activated carbon paper with the equation: qt = 1.35734 ( 1 − exp − 0.15312 t )\mathrm{qt}=1.35734\hspace{0.1667em}(1-{\exp ^{-0.15312\hspace{0.1667em}\mathrm{t}}}), with R 2 = 0.9981{\mathrm{R}^{2}}=0.9981.