P H D R ESEA R CH P R O P O SA L O N M I CR O W A V E H EA T I N G O F O I L SA N D S CO K E T O P R O D U CE A CT I V A T I O N

CA R B O N S ( A D SO R B EN T S)

I ntro d u c ti o n

The growing concerns due to more stringent legislations on environmental pollution as well as
increased focus on emerging contaminants have given rise to enormous increase in the development
of alternative technologies such as adsorption technology to the conventional ones. These
alternative techniques are environmental friendly and will effectively and sustainability
remediates the emerging hazardous contaminants (Celine et al, 2012).
Activated carbons (ACs) are universal adsorbents in adsorption technology. This technology is one of
the simple and applicable methods for treatment of industrial effluent, ground water treatment,
the removal of heavy volatile organic compounds from air and mercury vapours from a gas mixture;
also is a potential adsorbent for metal recovery, also in biomedical industries, etc. The high
applicability of AC is linked to its extraordinary porosity (microporous structure), capability for
rapid or faster adsorption kinetics, large specific surface area, low acid/base reactivity, favourable
pore size distribution, high efficiency and thermal stability (Ana, 2013; Roozbeh et al., 2013).

T h e rm a l / Co nve nti o na l H e a ti ng T e c h no l o g y
The most common method of producing AC is thermal heating technology. The drawbacks of this
technology are: high cost of heating, increase thermal gradient from the surface to the interior of
the precursor particle (produced inhomogeneous microstructure of AC), long preparation time and
fast firing. The high energy cost associated with thermal production of AC is basically one of the
most significant challenges for its commercial manufacture.
In Nigeria, as a case study, various researchers have established the use of locally source
carbonaceous materials such as palm kernel shells, coconut shell, saw dust, agricultural residues etc
in the production of AC by carbonization using thermal heating techniques. In spite of numerous
successful researches documented on AC production in Nigeria, it is still largely imported into the
country. Producing inexpensive AC is one of the main challenges in commercial manufacturing. The
inability of the industrial scale-up in Nigeria is owed to the economic and environmental
unsustainability of energy consumption of this thermal heating technique (Okoroigwe et al, 2013).

M i c ro w a ve H e a ti ng T e c h no l o g y

In order to address the limitations of conventional heating, some researchers recently have used
microwave energy as an alternative method of preparing ACs (Roozbeh et al., 2013). Carbon
materials have high capacity to absorb microwave energy i.e. they are very good microwave absorbers
and are such transformed into another carbon material with better porosity by microwave heating
(Menendez et al., 2010).
Microwave heating is volumetric in nature with thermal gradients decreasing gradually from the
centre to the surface of the sample, resulting in temperature at the interior greater than at the
surface of the sample. Due to this temperature gradient, light components are being released from

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the carbonaceous sample to create more pores. Microwave heating techniques offers other
advantages over conventional heating techniques, including: rapid energy transfer instead of heat
transfer, effective (selective or volumetric) heating, improved efficiency, lower activation
temperature, improved safety, immediate start-up and shutdown, easy of manipulation, improved
quality of final products (Robinson et al., 2009; Robinson et al., 2008; Appleton et al., 2005).

With the increasing significant advantages of microwave energy technology, many authors had
reported that the use of microwave heating has produced promising results in the production of low-
cost and homogenous ACs from carbonaceous materials such as agricultural wastes with high energy
saving (Roozbeh et al., 2013). The reviewed analysis of Roozbeh et al (2013) showed that the
adsorption capacity, pore volume and carbon yield of the AC (produced by microwave assisted
chemical activation of agricultural waste material) improved at an optimal irradiation time, power
level and impregnation ratio, also microwave irradiation increased the carbon-oxygen ratio. Ondon
et al (2014) reported the effect of microwave irradiation time and power on the adsorption and
desorption efficiency of chemically modified ACs. Hashisho et al (2005) investigated the use of
microwave heating for AC adsorption/desorption technology in capturing hazardous air pollutants
and heavy volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from vapour stream. More dedicated work and
further exploration are needed to expand this research to improve and optimise the performance
of microwave techniques and to scale-up the microwave heating techniques of AC production,
adsorption/desorption technology.
However, the aim of this research is to determine the effective parameters in terms of microwave
power, microwave irradiation time and agent flow rate in physical activation for the preparation of
ACs from oil sands coke using microwave energy. Also the effects of the variables on the physical
properties of the AC i.e. changes in the porosity, adsorption and desorption capacities will be
investigated.

M o ti va ti o n

I discovered the importance of the microwave heating technology when I undertook a personal
project titled ‘Microwave Extraction of Essential Oil from Clove Buds’ during my MSc programme
under the supervision of Dr. Robinson of National Centre for Industrial Microwave Processing,
Chemical and Environmental Engineering in the University of Nottingham. I got to know the
increasing importance of this new technology in the area of rapid heating, energy saving etc. I am
set to have much knowledge of this technology in application to AC production and the
adsorption/desorption efficiencies.

M e th o d o l o g y

This research will be carried out under the supervision of an academic staff (Dr. John Robinson) in
the department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering. I will build up my contextual knowledge
of the topic through a review of previous works carried out by numerous researchers in the area of

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production of AC using microwave energy by reading various journal, articles and conference
reports written by experts in my research area.

I shall carry out experiments using the microwave generator/rig in the Microwave laboratory of the
department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, within the University. Proximate analysis
of the oil sands coke as the precursor such as the moisture content, volatile matter, ash contents
and fixed carbon will be carried out.
The physical, chemical and adsorption/desorption characteristics such as pore volume, surface area,
particle size, and average pore size/diameter, surface functional groups etc. of the various ACs
produce will be thoroughly examined using micromeritics instrument, optical microscopy, scanning
electron microscopy (SEM), infrared spectrophotometer, and other equipment in the faculty of
engineering laboratories.
I will make sure quality is maintained throughout the course of this research project.
In addition, I intend to attend conferences anywhere in the world, which will advance and boost my
research work so that I can achieve quality and reproducible results on completion of this project
work.

P ro j e c te d O u tc o m e

It is anticipated that on completion of my research work, beside addition to knowledge and skills in
the field of Microwave energy in AC adsorption technology and its growing industrial application, it
is my goal that the project will give the optimum variables for effective production of AC with
efficient adsorption and desorption capacity production in terms of microwave power, irradiation
time, and agent flow rate.

Furthermore, it is my intention that the work will be published in leading peer-review journals and
presented at national and international conferences. I am anticipating that skills and knowledge
that I stand to gain will aid in the design and development of an optimised microwave energy
reactor/system for the industrial manufacturing of AC in Nigeria with the intention of facing out
the importation of ACs by working concertedly with other experts in academia and industries. It is
my plan to impact the knowledge acquired to the upcoming generation in my country in academia.

R ef erenc es

Ana Lea Cukierman (2013): Development and environmental applications of activated carbon cloths:
Review Article. Journal of Chemical Engineering. [Online] Available from:
th
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/261523 [Accessed on 10 July, 2015]

Appleton T.J., Colder R.I., Kingman S.W., Lowndes I.S. and Read A.G. (2005): Microwave technology
for energy-efficient processing of waste. Applied Energy, volume 81, pp.85-113.

Céline Stoquart, Pierre Servais, Pierre R. Berube, Benoit Barbeau (2012): Hybrid Membrane processes
using activated carbon treatment for drinking water: A review. Journal of Membrane Science,

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volume 411, Issues 412, pp.1-12.

Hashiso Z., Rood M. and Botich Leon (2005): Microwave-swing adsorption to capture and recover
vapurs from air streams with activated carbon fiber cloth. Environmental Science Technology,
vlome39, Issue 12, pp.6851-6859.

Menéndez J.A., Arenillas A., Fidalgo B., Fernández Y., Zubizarreta L., Calvo E.G., Bermúdez J.M.
(2010): Microwave heating processes involving carbon materials. Fuel Processing Technology, volume
91, Issue 1, pp.1-8.

Okoroigwe, E. C., Ofomatah, A. C., Oparaku, N. F. and Unachukwu, G. O. (2013): Production and
evaluation of activated carbon from palm kernel shells (PKS) for economic and environmental
sustainability. International Journal of Physical Sciences, volume 8, Issues 19, pp.1036-1041.

Ondon B. S., Sun B., Yan Z. Y., Zhu X. M. and Liu H. (2014): Effect of microwave heating on the
regeneration of modified activated carbons saturated with phenol. Applied Water Science, volume 4,
p p . 3 3 3 –3 3 9

Robinson, J.P., Kingman, S.W., Onobrakpeya, O. (2008): Microwave-assisted stripping of oil

contaminated drill cuttings. Journal of Environmental Management. Volume 8, Issues 2, pp. 211-
218.

Robinson, J.P., Kingman, S.W., Snape, C.E., Shang, H., Barranco, R. and Saeid, A. (2009): Separation
of polyaromatic hydrocarbons from contaminated soils using microwave heating. Separation and
Purification Technology. Volume 69, Issues 3, pp.249-254

Roozbeh Hoseinzadeh Hesasa, Wan Mohd Ashri Wan Dauda, J.N. Sahua and Arash Arami-Niya
(2013): The effects of a microwave heating method on the production of activated carbon from
agricultural waste: A review. Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis, volume 100, pp.1-11.