Facile preparation of porous biomass charcoal from peanut shell as adsorbent

Activated carbons derived from biomass have been proved to be one of the most promising adsorbents due to their abundance, low cost, reproducibility and environmental friendliness. In this study, a simple, facile and effective pyrolysis method was demonstrated to prepare hierarchical porous biomass charcoal by using peanut shells as precursor without chemical activation in an electric muffle furnace. The obtained products hold porous structure and abundant oxygen-containing functional groups, which were mainly due to in-built template of the structure of peanut shell and the preparation process without nitrogen protection, respectively. Interestingly, the obtained biomass charcoal sample with excellent adsorptive property quickly removed Pb²⁺ (100 mg/L) and methylene blue (50 mg/L) from water with removal efficiency of 96.5% and 97.1%, and removal capacity of 48 mg/g and 24 mg/g, respectively. The synthetic process was simple and economical, and it could be used as a beneficial reference in the recycling of biomass waste.