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Dialysis treatment is crucial for patients suffer from renal failure. The dialysis system removes the uremic toxin to a safe level in a patient's body. One of the major limitations of the current hemodialysis system is the capability to efficiently remove uremic toxins from patient's body. Nanoporous materials can be applied to improve the treatment. Palm kernel shell (PKS) biomass generated from palm oil mills can be utilized to prepare high quality nanoporous activated carbon (AC) and applied for urea adsorption in the dialysis system. In this study, AC was prepared from PKS via different carbonization temperatures and followed by carbon dioxide gas activation processes. The physical and chemical properties of the samples were studied. The results show that the porous AC with BET surface areas ranging from 541 to 622 m²g-1 and with total pore volumes varying from 0.254 to 0.297 cm³g-1, are formed with different carbonization temperatures. The equilibrium constant for urea adsorption by AC samples carbonized at 400, 500 and 600 °C are 0.091, 0.287 and 0.334, respectively. The increase of carbonization temperatures from 400 to 600 °C resulted in the increase in urea adsorption by AC predominantly due to increase in surface area. The present study reveals the feasibility of preparing AC with good porosity from PKS and potentially applied in urea adsorption application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Activated carbons (AC) and magnetic-containing activated carbons (MAC) have been synthesized using coconut shells as carbon sources and FeCl2·4H2O as magnetic precursor. The samples were characterized by nitrogen sorption, XRD, and FTIR. The BET surface area and total pore volume of MAC increase as the temperature increased. AC has XRD peaks, which evidences an amorphous carbon framework and MAC shows that this material consists of an organized carbon with the nanocrystalline magnetite embedded in its structure. The FTIR spectrum of MAC shows that carboxyl groups decreased as the temperature increased. Absorption bands of MAC shows the stretching and torsional vibration modes of the magnetite Fe[Single_Bond]O bond in tetrahedral and octahedral sites, respectively. The electrical conductivity studies showed that conductivity of MAC is more than the AC due to structural properties of carbons exists on a framework containing metal structures. © 2007 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]