Areca catechu husk oriented activated carbon in application for Bisphenol A removal through adsorption method

Highly porous carbon materials from organic biomass showed high surface area mainly caused by the different ratios of volatile material, carbon content, and minimum ash content. These all serve as excellent sources and criteria for developing a sound-activated carbon. In previous literature, methods for removal of bisphenol A (BPA) have been shown to share some common characteristics, such as being expensive, complex to perform and having long incubation time. Here, we report the preparation of the activated carbon material derived from Areca catechu (A. catechu) husk for BPA removal with high adsorption capability. The activated carbons were easy to store and use without adjusting the pH of the targeted solution. The production of this activated carbon includes the usage of phosphoric acid as the chemical activation step, followed by physical activation for a duration of 2 h at 550 °C. The result is an activated carbon with a high surface area (BET) trait of 483.40 m²/g plus a good pore volume of 0.87 cm³/g. The advantage of having a high surface area paired with a good pore volume is equal to having a high adsorption capacity; this has been proven by the result where with 1 g of this activated carbon, it can adsorb 28.41 mg of BPA from the solution, which is more superior compared to previous studies. With this, we demonstrated the potential of A. catechu husk as an alternative source of activated carbon material, explicitly targeting removing BPA from contaminated wastewater such as plastic manufacturing plants.