Recent Advances in Applied Activated Carbon Research

A special issue of ChemEngineering (ISSN 2305-7084).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 October 2025 | Viewed by 903

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Directorate of Engineering the Future, School of Science, Engineering and Environment, The University of Salford, Newton Building, Greater Manchester M5 4WT, UK
Interests: water resources engineering; agricultural water management; pollution control; wastewater treatment; decision support systems; treatment wetlands; integrated constructed wetlands; hydrology; storm water management; sustainable flood retention basins; sustainable drainage systems; permeable pavement systems; ponds
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The sustainable, effective and cost-efficient treatment of liquids and gases has become a challenge in many sectors, such as in water utilities and in the oil and gas industry. Advanced processing technologies with innovative materials such as activated carbon and biochar have become more attractive in modern water, environmental and chemical engineering applications. One example is the application of activated carbon filters for the fourth treatment stage in water treatment plants to remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (known as PFAS).

Today, like never before, questions arise regarding the quality of the activated carbon product’s surface after its development and enhancement via additive manufacturing methods such as coatings for the targeted removal of specific chemicals. Therefore, the creation of efficient carbon molecular sieve membranes is an example of a real challenge in industry.

Fundamental challenges with the thermal decomposition and mechanical destruction of innovative multicomponent carbon-based materials and coatings need to be addressed to move the science and industry forward. In addition, the issues of in situ monitoring, diagnostics and improvements to the performance of sustainable technologies, such as biological regeneration methods, deserve special attention.

The latest achievements regarding the advanced processing technologies of innovative carbon-based materials have become a relevant topic in the most authoritative scientific journals. In addition, progressive achievements have received awards at prestigious competitions and at international scientific events. Moreover, the activated carbon industry has also discovered the use of more sustainable materials and their contribution to the sustainable development goals as additional performance indicators to adjust their sourcing strategy and energy-intensive production processes.

This Special Issue is devoted to the most recent advances and achievements in the field of applied activated carbon research. Welcome are contributions to novel application technologies such as more sustainable adsorbers and multi-stage fluidized bed reactors, as well as the biological regeneration of activated carbon and new products including biochars and carbon molecular sieve membranes. Clean product development methods and strategies in chemical, water and biogas engineering are welcome, and environmental monitoring methods and the results of the water and gas phases are of interest.

The Special Issue will have two sections: fundamentals and recent research advances. In section one, a third of the articles may comprise teaching papers, handbooks, short communications from the community and review articles to explain the basic applications, technologies, processes, methods and material characteristics to readers from different backgrounds. The other two thirds of the articles should be technical and full research papers focusing on advanced topics characterized by the keywords found below.

You may choose our Joint Special Issue in Technologies and Joint Special Issue in Clean Technologies.

Yours sincerely,

Prof. Dr. Miklas Scholz
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • activated carbon
  • application technology
  • biochar and biogas
  • biological regeneration of activated carbon
  • bioreactor
  • business development
  • carbon-based materials and carbon molecular sieve membrane
  • chemical engineering and clean technologies
  • design of adsorbers; environmental monitoring
  • gas phase and material science
  • multi-stage fluidized bed reactor
  • novel technologies
  • PFASS and reactivation
  • sustainable development
  • trinkwasser and water phase

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

31 pages, 9106 KiB  
Article
Thermodynamic Analysis of Cyclic Operation of On-Board Nanoporous Carbon-Based Adsorbed Methane Storage Tank with Various Thermal Control Systems
by Sergey S. Chugaev, Ilya E. Men’shchikov, Igor D. Shelyakin, Evgeny M. Strizhenov, Alexander E. Grinchenko, Andrey V. Shkolin and Anatoly A. Fomkin
ChemEngineering 2024, 8(6), 128; https://doi.org/10.3390/chemengineering8060128 - 10 Dec 2024
Viewed by 380
Abstract
Thermal effects of adsorption and desorption, leading to temperature fluctuations and losses of adsorption storage systems capacity in the processes of gas charging and discharging, are the main obstacle to the wide practical application of adsorbed natural gas (ANG) technology. This work presents [...] Read more.
Thermal effects of adsorption and desorption, leading to temperature fluctuations and losses of adsorption storage systems capacity in the processes of gas charging and discharging, are the main obstacle to the wide practical application of adsorbed natural gas (ANG) technology. This work presents a numerical simulation of heat and mass transfer processes under various cyclic operation modes of a full-scale adsorption storage tank with various thermal control systems. The high-density monolithic adsorbent KS-HAM, obtained on the basis of industrial activated carbon KS-HA, was used as the adsorption material. The phase composition, surface morphology, and porous structure of the sorbents were studied. The adsorption of methane on the KS-HA adsorbent was measured. It is shown that increasing the duration of charging leads to obtaining additional capacity of the ANG system; however, the final efficiency and benefit at the end of the charging–discharging cycle are determined by the efficiency of the thermal control system and the gas-discharging mode. It has been shown that the presence of a finned thermal control system allows for charging the adsorption storage tank 3–8 times faster and provides an 8–24% greater amount of gas discharged at the discharging stage compared to the ANG system without fins. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Applied Activated Carbon Research)
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