The production of activated carbon from leaf and its application for nitrate removal from wastewater

Nitrate has high solubility, so it is known as a ground water contaminate in the world. Nitrate causes a lot of serious disease for humans. Various physical, chemical and biological methods, including chemical precipitation, distillation, reverse osmosis, electrodialysis, ion exchange, biodenitrification and adsorption have been widely used for the treatment of nitrate-bearing wastewater. Adsorption has been considered to be an environment-friendly and cost-competitive process for nitrate removal from wastewater. In recent years, many researches have focused on using of various low-cost adsorbents such as activated carbon. In this study, the activated carbon was produced from leaves. Different ranges of carbonization temperature lead to different total pore volumes and mean pore diameters. At best, the adsorbent prepared at 700 °C was able to remove nitrate up to 84%.