Trace analysis of carbazole in commercial diesel by using adsorption on activated biochar from rice husk pyrolysis

Abstract

The valorization of rice husk biochar obtained by pyrolysis was studied by production high quality activated carbon. Activated carbon (AC) chemically treated by K2CO3, was used as sorbent phase in bar adsorptive microextraction followed by comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled to a quadrupole mass spectrometer analysis (BAμE/GC×GC-qMS) for trace analysis of carbazole in commercial diesel. The prepared AC was characterized by N2 adsorption, SEM-EDS and pHPZC. Assays of nitrogen adsorption isotherm demonstrated that the AC presented microporosity and the Density Functional Theory Calculation was applied to obtain information concerning the micropore size distribution. The BET surface area and total pore volume were 1850 m2g-1and 0.83 cm3g-1, respectively. AC from rice huskpyrolysis (RH) showed an acceptable adsorption capacity for Carbazole in diesel matrices allowed us to obtain average recoveries of 91.0 % and convenient analytical parameters. From the data obtained, the proposed methodology proved to be a suitable sorption-based static microextraction alternative for monitoring trace levels of carbazole in commercial diesel.