COCONUT SHELLS AND PALM SHELL USED AS WATER PURIFIERS IN TOKYO

Granulated charcoal, made of shells of coconuts and palm kernels, is being used by treatment plants in Tokyo and neighboring regions to filter tap water supplies and protect the city’s water from radiations leaked by a damaged nuclear power plant, according to a report last month from www.bloomberg.com. Prices for the absorbent carbon material have risen as much as 44 percent since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that triggered the radiation threat, said Yoshio Toi, a spokesman for the municipal government in Chiba, a prefecture neighboring Tokyo.



Treatment plants are trying to remove any traces of radioactive matter, such as iodine-131, known to cause thyroid cancer, and convince customers that water supplies are safe. Some Tokyo facilities more than quadrupled the amount of activated charcoal used in filtration after a March 21 sample contained iodine-131 that exceeded the safe limit for infants. “Tokyo is ordering more activated charcoal as we deplete our stocks,” said Gen Ozeki, a spokesman for the city’s Bureau of Waterworks. “It’s not just Tokyo doing this, others are taking extraordinary measures for their water, too, so charcoal is becoming scarce.” Kuraray Co., which produces about 24,500 tons of a year of activated charcoal, is receiving orders for “several hundred tons” daily from utilities in and around Tokyo, said Takeshi Hasegawa, a spokesman for the Tokyo-based company. He declined to comment on prices.

Continous Pyrolysis System for Activated Carbon Plant

Activated carbons are versatile adsorbents. Their adsorptive properties are due to their high surface area, a microporous structure, and a high degree of surface reactivity. They are, used, therefore, to purify, decolorize, deodorize, dechlorinate, separate, and concentrate in order to permit recovery and to filter, remove, or modify the harmful constituents from gases and liquid solutions. Consequently, activated carbon adsorption is of interest to many economic sectors and concern areas as diverse as food, pharmaceutical, chemical, petroleum, nuclear, automobile, and vacuum industries as well as for the treatment of drinking water, industrial and urban waste water, and industrial flue gases.


Activated carbon in its broadest sense includes a wide range of processed amorphouscarbon-based materials. It is not truly an amorphous material but has a microcrystalline structure. Activated carbons have a highly developed porosity and an extended interparticulate surface area. Their preparation involves two main steps: the carbonization of the carbonaceous raw material at temperatures below 800°C in an inert atmosphere and the activation of the carbonized product. Thus, all carbonaceous materials can be converted into activated carbon, although the properties of the final product will be different, depending on the nature of the raw material used, the nature of the activating agent, and the conditions of the carbonization and activation processes.


During the carbonization process, most of the noncarbon elements such as oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen are eliminated as volatile gaseous species by the pyrolytic decomposition of the starting material. The residual elementary carbon atoms group themselves into stacks of flat, aromatic sheets cross-linked in a random manner. These aromatic sheets are irregularly arranged, which leaves free interstices. These interstices give rise to pores, which make activated carbons excellent adsorbents.

During carbonization these pores are filled with the tarry matter or the products of decomposition or at least blocked partially by disorganized carbon. This pore structure in carbonized char is further developed and enhanced during the activation process, which converts the carbonized raw material into a form that contains the greatest possible number of randomly distributed pores of various sizes and shapes, giving rise to an extended and extremely high surface area of the product. The activation of the char is usually carried out in an atmosphere of air, CO2, or steam in the temperature range of 800°C to 900°C. This results in the oxidation of some of the regions within the char in preference to others, so that as combustion proceeds,
a preferential etching takes place. This results in the development of a large internal surface, which in some cases may be as high as 2500 m2/g.

Activated carbons have a microcrystalline structure. But this microcrystalline structure differs from that of graphite with respect to interlayer spacing, which is 0.335 nm in the case of graphite and ranges between 0.34 and 0.35 nm in activated carbons. The elemental composition of a typical activated carbon has been found to be 88% C, 0.5% H, 0.5% N, 1.0% S, and 6 to 7% O, with the balance representing inorganic ash constituents. The oxygen content of an activated carbon can vary, however, depending on the type of the source raw material and the conditions of the activation process.

The most important application of activated carbon adsorption where large amounts of activated carbons are being consumed and where the consumption is ever increasing is the purification of air and water. There are two types of adsorption systems for the purification of air. One is the purification of air for immediate use in inhabited spaces, where free and clean air is a requirement. The other system prevents air pollution of the atmosphere from industrial exhaust streams. The former operates at pollutant concentrations below 10 ppm, generally about 2 to 3 ppm. As the concentration of the pollutant is low, the adsorption filters can work for a long
time and the spent carbon can be discarded, because regeneration may be expensive. Air pollution control requires a different adsorption setup to deal with larger concentrations of the pollutants. The saturated carbon needs to be regenerated by steam, air, or nontoxic gaseous treatments. These two applications require activated carbons with different porous structures. The carbons required for the purification of air in inhabited spaces should be highly microporous to affect greater adsorption at lower concentrations. In the case of activated carbons for air pollution control, the pores should have higher adsorption capacity in the concentration range 10 to 500 ppm.

For personal protection when working in a hostile environment, the activated carbons used in respirators are also different. When working in the chemical industry, the respirators can use ordinary activated carbons because the pollutants are generally of low toxicity. However, for protection against warfare gases such as chloropicrin, cynogen chloride, hydrocynic acid, and nerve gases, special types of impregnated activated carbons are used in respirators and body garments. These activated carbons can protect by physical adsorption, chemisorption, and catalytic decomposition of the hazardous gases.


More than 800 specific organic and inorganic chemical compounds have been identified in drinking water. These compounds are derived from industrial and municipal discharge, urban and rural runoff, natural decomposition of vegetable and animal matter, and from water and waste water chlorination practices. Liquid effluents from industry also discharge varying amounts of a variety of chemicals into surface and ground water. Many of these chemicals are carcinogenic and cause many other ailments of varying intensity and character. Several methods such as coagulation, oxidation, aeration, ion exchange, and activated carbon adsorption have been used for the removal of these chemical compounds.


Active carbons in the form of carbonized wood charcoal have been used for many centuries. The Egyptians used this charcoal about 1500 BC as an adsorbent for medicinal purposes and also as a purifying agent. The ancient Hindus in India purified their drinking water by filtration through charcoal. The first industrial production of active carbon started about 1900 for use in sugar refining industries. This active carbon was prepared by the carbonization of a mixture of materials of vegetable origin in the presence of metal chlorides or by activation of the charred material by CO2 or steam. Better quality gas-adsorbent carbons received attention during World War I, when they were used in gas masks for protection against hazardous gases and vapors.

Nearly 80% (~300,000 tons/yr) of the total active carbon is consumed for liquid-phase applications, and the gas-phase applications consume about 20% of the total production. Because the active carbon application for the treatment of waste water is picking up, the production of active carbons is always increasing. The consumption of activecarbon is the highest in the U.S. and Japan, which together consume two to four times more active carbons than European and other Asian countries. The per capita consumption of active carbons per year is 0.5 kg in Japan, 0.4 kg in the U.S., 0.2 kg in Europe, and 0.03 kg in the rest of the world. This is due to the fact that Asian countries by and large have not started using active carbons for water and air pollution control purposes in large quantities.


Coconut shell and palm shell are the best raw materials for manufacturing of activated carbon because of its hardness. Indonesia is the largest coconut plantation with about 4 million hectares and the largest CPO producer in the world with palm oil plantations more than 7 million ha, which is the ideal location of the source of raw material for production of activated carbon. Indonesian coconut plantation area occupies 31.4% of the world with vast coconut plantations of coconut production of approximately 12.915 billion items (24.4% of world production). Coconut shell weight reached 12% of the weight of coconuts. With weight of coconut average 1.5 kg, the potential of Indonesia, namely coconut shell 2.3 million tons / year. The number of palm oil mills in Indonesia and Malaysia more than 800 units. When an palm oil mill with a capacity of 30 tons of fresh fruit bunches per hour, it will produce 1.95 tonnes of palm shells / hour or about 46.8 tons / day. Certainly the number of very abundant for the production of activated carbon.
Our continuous pyrolysis technology with capacity 60 up to 200 ton/day INPUT would very reliable in the process of carbonization. Integration our continuous pyrolysis technology in activated carbon plant would be very beneficial because the most efficient processes (self sustaining process with syngas) and all products can be drawn.

You want to produce large-scale wood pellet? I think biochar would be better and wiser

It is a problem as old as commerce. When supply exceeds demand, prices fall. When supply is increased even further, weak prices fall further and take out the higher cost producers.

This is exactly what is happening in the pellet market in Europe, especially to utility companies. Ostensibly, total demand for wood pellets from power companies across Europe is close to 5 million tonnes. However, supply for this market from

Europe (including Scandinavia) and North America alone is well in excess of this number.

To put this in context, global demand for wood pellets is approximately 12 million tonnes, of which 5 million tonnes is from the commercial sector and 7 million tonnes from the residential sector. The most current data is for 2009, and sourced

from Hawkins Wright and RISI.

To make matter worse, various pellet suppliers are announcing with glee that they are about to build the biggest, fastest or most efficient pellet manufacturing plants. Yet prices are seriously low. If these mills cannot turn a profit at the very low industrial pellet prices in Europe (+/-EURCif118.10/t), then the investments to build them will be risky.

Combined commercial and residential demand in Europe accounts for just over 75 per cent of the global market for wood pellets. North America follows with close to 20 per cent and the other regions make up less than 5 per cent. Therefore, the overwhelming demand is in Europe and North America. Both regions are facing extreme financial challenges.

While global demand for wood pellets in 2009 was close to 12 million tonnes, supply capacity is currently more than 14.5 million tonnes, meaning that more than 17 per cent is under utilised.

The forecast figures for 2015 do not make pragmatists joyful. Demand is projected to increase by almost 28 per cent per annum, to reach 32 million tonnes. Production in 2015 is estimated to be 35 million tonnes with a capacity of 41 million tonnes. Therefore, production is going to be in the region of 9 per cent higher than demand, and around15 per cent of capacity is going to be under-utilised. (Report of Carbon Edge, Australia December 2010).

So if you still want to force yourself to produce wood pellets a large scale? Think with logic and realistic, then decide it.

Biochar is a wise choice, for several reasons:

1. Environmental problems of organic wastes pollution that need immediate treatment and global environmental problems of climate change and global warming so that the required real solution to this. Biochar as one of the best choices by absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere or carbon-negative strategy to prevent global warming.

2. Food security. Declining soil quality will have an impact in declining crop productivity. Biochar as a carbon-rich material that will improve soil quality and increase crop production. For this case so that the needs of biochar is large and ever-increasing.

The world’s total agricultural area is about 5 billion hectares, one billion more than for forests. Of this, about 1.5 billion ha (30 percent) is arable land and land under permanent crops,and the remaining 3.5 billion ha is permanent pasture. In addition, there are also up to 2.5 billion ha of rangelands.

Soils naturally contain large amounts of carbon, derived primarily from decayed vegetation. But the last few decades have seen a dramatic loss of top soil, soil carbon and inherent soil fertility due to the spread of unecological farming methods, and the one-way traic of food supplies from rural areas to cities without the return of carbon back to the farmland where the food was grown. A recent report by the FAO states: “Most agricultural soils have lost anything between 30 and 75 percent of their antecedent soil organic carbon pool, or a total of 30 to 40 tC/ha. Carbon loss from soils is mainly associated with soil degradation . . . and has amounted to 78 +/- 12 Gt since 1850. Thus, the present organic carbon pool in agricultural soils is much lower than their potential capacity.

3. Renewable energy. Our pyrolysis plant will produce biooil and syngas as side products. Both can be used for energy and green chemical applications. Excess syngas for energy applications for the capacity of 200 TPD INPUT plant will produce at least 5 MW of electricity.

4. Activated carbon. Biochar or charcoal can be improved quality into activated carbon. The high water pollution in major cities and around mining areas increase the need for activated carbon. Many purification industries also require large of the activated carbon to improve the quality of their products.

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