Performance of the Hydrothermal Carbon Prepared From the Food Waste as Solid Fuel and a Cu²⁺ Adsorbent

The resource utilization of food waste poses a pressing problem during the urbanization in China. In this paper, hydrothermal carbon (HC) was prepared from food waste by hydrothermal carbonization (HTC), and the combustion performance of HC was analyzed. The results indicated that the inorganic salts present in crab shells and bone meal within the food waste enhanced the ash content of the HC. The ash content of food waste HC with crab shells (FWH‐CS) and food waste HC with bone meal (FWH‐BM) was 18.43% and 30.26%, respectively. The removal of bones and crab shells from food waste increased the calorific value of the HC. The HC was subjected to K 2 CO 3 activation to produce the activated HC (AHC) for Cu 2+ adsorption. Static adsorption experiments revealed that the food waste AHC (FWA) exhibited the highest Cu 2+ adsorption capacity (27.575 mg/g), whereas AHC from food waste with crab shells (FWA‐CS) showed the lowest (23.9 mg/g). Combining the adsorption kinetics analysis, the adsorption mechanism for all three AHC samples predominantly involved chemisorption, supplemented by physisorption. Adsorption isotherm analysis indicated that both monolayer and multilayer adsorption processed in the three AHC samples.