Coke powder improving the performance of desulfurized activated carbon from the cyclic thermal regeneration

[Display omitted] •Activated carbon (AC) is prepared by adding coking by-product─coke powder (CP)•The addition of CP improves the performance of AC for the cyclic desulfurization.•CP addition reduces the chemical and mechanical loss of AC in cyclic regeneration.•The function of CP as skeleton maintains the structural stability of AC.•CP reduces the oxidation of carbon by oxygen in the AC during thermal regeneration. Thermal regeneration is widely used in industry for the activated carbon/coke for flue gas desulfurization. But the serious carbon and mechanical loss of AC results in the rapid dropping of desulfurization performance. This paper studies the effect of coke powder (CP) as an additive for improving the performance of AC for the flue gas desulfurization/regeneration. Results show that the addition of CP decreased the carbon and mechanical loss by 33% and 41% after 10 cycles, and improve the cyclic desulfurization performance by slowing down the decrease of sulfur capacity. Physicochemical structure analyses confirmed that the addition of CP maintained the structural stability and prevented the generation of acidic oxygen-containing functional groups as well as the reduction of π − π* basic functional group. The conducive effect might be attributed to the reduction of the redox reaction from the addition of CP. This study suggests that AC with CP addition has a great potential for the application on the activated carbon/coke flue gas desulfurization (ACFGD).