Laser-enhanced activated carbon from Jericho date stones: unified evidence from multi-model structural, textural, and surface analyses

Activated carbon from date stones is a promising material for energy, environmental and catalytic applications due to its high carbon yield, renewable nature, and tunable porosity. This paper presents an extensive comparative study of potassium hydroxide-activated carbon (AC) vs. Nd:YAG laser post-treated activated carbon (LAC), both derived from Jericho date stones. Comprehensive analyses – XRD, SEM, FTIR, nitrogen sorption (BJH, Horvath-Kawazoe, DFT, DR, DA), BET, Langmuir, and t-plot – show striking improvement in LAC’s microporosity, mesoporosity, surface area, and surface chemistry. Benchmarking against published literature, these findings demonstrate unified agreement across models and characterization methods, thus supporting laser post-treatment as an effective complementary strategy for tailoring the textural and surface properties of biomass-derived activated carbon and may offer a promising pathway for further development of sustainable porous carbon materials.

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