Abstract
Countercurrent oxygen reaction (COR) was developed and evaluated for regeneration of exhausted activated carbon. Whether the regeneration technique is feasible or not is affected strongly by gradual loss and physical changes of activated carbon, energy consumption, and effective removal of adsorbed materials during the process. Various parameters such as reaction temperature, the loss of activated carbon, surface area, pore volume, surface structure, adsorptive property, etc. were examined to determine the effectiveness of COR. The results of these tests showed that the parameters were strongly dependent on oxidant flow rate, and suggest that the newly developed COR is comparable and, in some ways, possibly superior to conventional regeneration techniques because the overall process runs in a single step and is less energy intensive, and also because the adsorptive capacity of exhausted activated carbon was completely recovered.
