The benefit of using bamboo as one of eco-friendly alternative materials for manufacturing activated carbon has gained significant moments in the past years mainly driven by (1) scarcity of raw materials and (2) industry looking for more sustainable and stable material supply in addition to traditionally coconut and coal materials. Commercially available bamboo activated carbon exhibit many excellent features such as well-developed micropore, high iodine value, high total pore volume, low ash content, renewable, and low carbon foot print. For certain applications where high hardness, high density, and low ash are critical and where bamboo activated carbon suffered due to inherited bamboo properties, further product improvements and application developments are needed. The paper describe Huaqing/Tianyi’s approaches to improve properties such as hardness, ash, and density which, potentially can extend bamboo activated carbon’s applications to area such as cabinet air filter, industrial chemical filters, catalyst substrate, home water filter, etc

For improving bamboo carbon properties on density, hardness, and ash two approaches are evaluated: (1) modifying and adopting different manufacturing process; such as reduce carbonization temperature (from 500-800^oC to 350-650^oC) and extend the carbonization time (from 10-12hr to 30-48hr);(2) blending of different portions of bamboo materials. As a result, bamboo activated carbon density has been improved [...]. Hardnes has been improved from [...] (Table 1)

For exploring new applications, bamboo activated carbon with improved properties and different mesh size are developed for cabinet air filter/Industrial chemical filter (4x8,30x60), water cartridge/pitch filter (20x50,30x60), carbon block filter (50x200,80x325), and catalyst substrates (4mm pellet, 4x8, 4x10, 30x60). Key parameters such as density, iodine, hardness, ash, and CTC values are summarized and compared with coconut based activated carbon. Some new applications will be discussed. (Table 2).

In summary, products with different mesh sizes are developed with focus on improving product properties such as hardness, density and ash. Activated carbon parameters such as iodine, hardness, density, ash, and moisture are compared between bamboo activated carbon and commercial coconut activated carbon. Finally, new applications for bamboo activated carbon are explored with examples. With continuous product development and exploring new applications, we hope to establish bamboo as one of the better alternative raw materials for manufacturing activated carbon.