The results of proximate and ultimate analysis and surfaceproperties of the sour cherry stones and activated carbon are givenin Table 1. The carbon content increased after activation process,and the hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen contents indicated theopposite change trend. Since the sulfur content of activated carbonwas below the detection limit, the activated carbon could be usedin adsorption and purification process. This is due to the release ofvolatiles during carbonization that results in the elimination ofnon-carbon species and enrichment of carbon (Aygün et al.,2003). Also, activation process led to an increase in fixed carboncontent while decrease in volatile matter content. The ash contentof activated carbon slightly increased by activation process. Theporosity has a strong effect on the adsorption properties of theactivated carbon. The specific surface area of activated carbonwas found to be 1704 m2 g1 and a good deal of the material(63%) consisted of micropores. The nitrogen adsorption–desorptionisotherms and pore size distribution of activated carbon obtainedfrom sour cherry stones are presented in SupplementaryFigs. S1a and S1b. The isotherms of activated carbon can be properlyclassified as a mixture of type I and type IV isotherms. Accordingto the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry(IUPAC) classification, type I isotherm can be associated withmicroporous structure while type IV isotherm exhibited by themixture of microporous and mesoporous material (Angın et al.,
2013a; Sütçü and Demiral, 2009; Foo and Hameed, 2011). A comparison of the significant parameters of activated carbon with
the carbonized sour cherry stones showed best improvement of
the BET surface area, total pore volume, implying pore development
and widening of the existing pores during activation process
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