Activated carbons from agro-industrial residues in Côte d’Ivoire: Feedstock chemistry, process-structure-property relationships, and pathways to application-specific industrial grades
Abstract
Côte d’Ivoire generates a diverse range of agricultural and agro-industrial residues that could serve as precursors for activated carbon. This structured critical review maps fourteen experimental studies conducted in Côte d’Ivoire or explicitly using Ivorian biomass and integrates them with international evidence on activation mechanisms, process engineering, scale-up, and application-specific qualification. Sources were identified through database and reference-list searches closed on 16 September 2026, and studies were classified with two review-specific scales of technological evidence (D0–D5) and comparability (C1–C3). The analysis focuses on how feedstock characteristics and carbonization/activation conditions control pore architecture, surface chemistry, mechanical behavior, and ultimately service performance. The Ivorian evidence base covers coconut shells, cashew residues, Borassus aethiopum, Acacia species, cocoa residues, rubber-tree biomass, coffee husks, and palm shells. Reported performances include BET specific surface areas above 1,000 m² g⁻¹, iodine numbers close to or above 900 mg g⁻¹, and high removal efficiencies in water-treatment and biogas-purification tests. However, protocols remain heterogeneous and provide limited information on hardness, attrition, inter-batch reproducibility, dynamic adsorption, regeneration, and closed mass-energy-water balances. Côte d’Ivoire also continues to import activated carbon, while trade statistics alone cannot establish the volume of domestically produced industrial-grade material. The key challenge is therefore no longer to demonstrate conversion feasibility, but to establish reproducible feedstock-process-structure-property-performance relationships through to material qualification. An application-specific grade pathway is proposed for water treatment, gas purification, and gold recovery, linking laboratory evidence to pilot-scale validation and industrial qualification. The pathway is prospective: the Ivorian experimental evidence is limited to laboratory-scale tests (plus one semi-industrial column prototype), no Ivorian carbon has been tested for gold recovery, and reproducible industrial production is not documented.
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