Collection of Czechoslovak Chemical Communications - digital archive 

Abstract

The effect is studied of the activated carbon moisture on the recovery (R) of some organic substances, viz. benzene, acetone, tetrahydrofuran, ethanol, 2-methyl-1-propanol, and 1-butanol, trapped from air of different humidity and desorbed with carbon disulphide to equilibrium. If the weight fraction of water in the activated carbon is w = 0.02, the variations of R lie within the limits of error (for 0.3 g of activated carbon and 5 ml of CS₂), whereas if w = 0.15, the variations of R, if disregarded, can result in errors as high as -45% for ethanol and -6 to -12% for butanol and acetone. In the case of benzene and tetrahydrofuran, the increase in the water content in the carbon does not affect the R value. The error increases as the activated carbon-to-carbon disulphide weight ratio is raised. For the standard addition method, the relative error was in average 18% (largely negative) for ethanol and -4.5 to -13% for the remaining substances.