Honeycomb monoliths of activated carbons for effluent gas purification

During the incineration of urban waste incomplete mineralisation of some or ganic species can give rise to effluents contaminated with VOCs, furans and dioxins. These units produce large volumes of gas to be treated, but with low contents of these toxic species, for which the pressure drop caused by passing through a conventional pellet adsorption bed can be considerable. A nother solution is to spray activated carbon powder into the contaminated e ffluent gas, although this is an expensive method. Thus, to avoid the probl ems associated with pressure drop or high operation costs, commercial activ ated carbons have been conformed as open-channel honeycomb monoliths. Their adsorption capacities towards an aromatic probe molecule, o-dichlorobenzen e, chosen to simulate dioxins have been tested in a static regime. The resu lts were analysed together with the textural and mechanical properties of t he monolith composites in order to establish criteria by which the most sui table honeycomb monolith composite material for industrial use could be pre pared. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.