Preparation of adsorbents from sugarcane manufacturing by-product filter-mud by thermal activation

A series of experiments with thermal activation were carried out on filter-mud waste from the sugarcane refining process in a rotary reactor. The influence of activation parameters on the agro-industrial waste by varying the operation temperature of 600–800 °C was determined. The variations of pore properties as well as the change of chemical characteristics in the resulting solids (FM series) were also studied. The results show that the resulting samples are type IV with hysteresis loops corresponding to type H3 from nitrogen adsorption–desorption isotherms, indicating slit-shaped mesoporous characteristics (BET surface areas of 57–132 m² g⁻¹). The results also show that the surface areas of the unwashed products and water-washed products are lower than those of the washed products because of residues left in the crude products. The adsorption of paraquat on FM sample was preliminarily evaluated. The isotherm showed that the FM adsorbent had a high affinity for this herbicide and can be well fitted by Freundlich model. Thus, the agro-industrial waste is one resource for producing the mesoporous materials, and it may be applied to the water treatment for the removal of organic contaminants.