The objectives of this study are to convert at laboratory scale agricultural residues into activated carbons(AC) with specific properties

to characterize them and to test them in adsorption reactor for tetracycline removal

a common antibiotic.Two new ACs were produced by direct activation with steam from beet pulp(BP-H

2

O) and peanut hulls(PH-H

2

O) in environmental friendly conditions.BP-H

2

O and PH-H

2

O present carbon content ranged between 78% and 91%

similar BET surface areas(821 and 829 m

2

·g

-1

respectively) and pHPZC values(9.8).Their porosities are different:PH-H

2

O is mainly microporous(84%) with 0.403 cm

3

·g

-1

of total porous volume

whereas BP-H

2

O develops a mesoporous volume of 0.361 cm

3

·g

-1

representing 50% of the total porous volume.Two other commercial granular AC carbons(GAC1 and GAC2) were also characterised and used for comparison.The adsorption study is conducted in batch reactors.Two parts can be observed from kinetic decay curves:a very fast concentration decrease during the first 12 h

followed by a slow adsorption.An optimal contact time of 120 h is also

deduced from these curves.It is shown as well that adsorption decreases with an increase of pH

indicating that the form preferentially adsorbed is probably the zwitterion form of the tetracycline.From equilibrium isotherms data

two adsorption models have been used:Langmuir and Freundlich.Both of them lead to a very good description of the experimental data.Maximum adsorption capacities deduced from the Langmuir equation follow the sequence:GAC2(817 mg·g

-1

)BP-H

2

O(288 mg·g

-1

)GAC1(133 mg·g

-1

)PH-H

2

O(28 mg·g

-1

).In real spring waters spiked with TC(tetracyclines)

adsorption isotherms show that the maximum adsorption capacity of BP-H

2

O is slightly increased to 309 mg·g

-1

while it is decreased by one third to 550 mg·g

-1

in the case of GAC2.This study demonstrates that the production of AC from agricultural residues

at lab-scale

is feasible and leads to genuine activated carbons with different intrinsic properties.