Abstract: In this paper, wood-based granular activated carbon was used to study adsorption kinetics of n-butane. The effects of the adsorption temperature, the n-butane concentration and the n-butane flow rate were investigated. Then the date was fit by first order kinetics model, pseudo-second order kinetic model, Elovich kinetic model and Ben nahum kinetic model. The results showed that with the increasing of temperature, the adsorption amount of n-butane decreased. This indicated that adsorption of n-butane in activated carbon was an exothermic reaction. With the increasing of the n-butane concentration, n-butane adsorption performance also increased, but the adsorption time did not reduce. The flow rate of n-butane significantly influenced adsorption rate and adsorption time, but it had minor influence on the amount of n-butane adsorbed at equilibrium. It is also found that the R² of Bangham equation is more than 0.99, which is much higher than the other three kinetic equation. Therefore the absorption kinetics is well satisfied with Bangham equation.

Key words: activated carbon, n-butane, adsorption kinetics