Data on the characterization of seaweed, wheat bran, and other food processing byproducts as feasible biosorbents.

Traditionally, biosorbents have been used to remove contaminants from polluted water, such as wastewater, landfill leachate, rainwater or drinking water. However, two alternative uses of biosorbents have been proposed relatively recently: the removal of heavy metals from fruit juices by biosorption and the use of saturated biosorbents as animal feed. Because these biosorbents are in contact with food or are used as animal feed, the concentration of contaminants in biosorbents must be known. In addition, the characterization of biosorbents is crucial because biosorbent properties affect both adsorption efficiency and the performance of full-scale biosorbent systems. This article presents data from Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis, and the concentration of toxic metals (determined by ICP-MS) as well as pesticide residues was determined in ten biomass samples, namely, pea skins, straw, seaweed Fucus vesiculosus, wheat bran, rye bran, raspberry seeds, peat, buckwheat husks, highbush blueberry pulp, and blackcurrant pulp. Selected biomass samples were also characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), nitrogen physisorption analysis, and pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC/ MS/FID) analysis.

Synergy between alkali activation and a salt template in superactive carbon production from lignin.

Due to growing demand, the performance of traditional active carbon is insufficient. An innovative solution is superactive carbon with an ultra-high surface area as high as 3000 m2 g-1. However, this material is very costly due to the considerable amount of alkali used in its manufacturing. To obtain superactive carbon from lignin, KOH and KCl were used simultaneously. The method was thoroughly studied to describe the mechanism of pore origin and control the pore size. Because of synergy between KOH and KCl, superactive carbon with an ultra-high surface area (2938 ± 42 m2 g-1) was obtained at essentially diminished KOH consumption (1 g g-1) in contrast to previously reported methods. The process was optimised using the response surface method. The pore size can be tuned by varying the amount of KOH and temperature. Observed synergy enabled reduced alkali consumption, overcoming the barrier to widespread implementation of superactive carbon.