Valorization of jeans waste into activated carbon through thiosulfate activation Arjona, Lourdes Blázquez García, Gabriel Calero De Hoces, Francisca Mónica Martín Lara, María Ángeles Rodríguez Solís, Rafael Jeans waste Valorization Activated carbon Lourdes Arjona would like to thank the National Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation (SENACYT) and the Institute of Training and Development of Human Resources (IFARHU) of the Republic of Panama for awarding her a scholarship to undertake doctoral studies (Contract No. 270-2024-187). Project PDC 2022-133808-I00 (ADSORCHAR) was financed by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union Next Generation EU/PRTR. The authors are grateful for the support provided by the external services of the University of Granada (Centro de Instrumentaci´ on Científica, CIC). Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Granada / CBUA. Textile waste is an increasing environmental problem that has not been tackled yet. This work explores the plausible valorization of denim fabric from jeans waste by the preparation of activated carbons through thermal decomposition and chemical activation. Although the denim fabric under pyrolysis led to a moderately porous char, the textural properties were considerably enhanced with chemical activation. Sodium thiosulfate was selected as the activating agent for this waste for the first time as a more environmentally friendly activating agent if compared to potassium alkali and carbonate. Moreover, thiosulfate overcomes some limitations of the other two, leading to a higher final yield, reduced water consumption in the washing step, high surface area (974 m2 g−1), and balanced presence of micro and mesopores. Chemically, the surface during thiosulfate activation was characterized by a large amount of oxygenated groups represented by carbonyl and quinone, as TPD and XPS characterization revealed. These properties enhanced the adsorption uptake of pharmaceuticals in water, such as sulfamethoxazole (312 mg g−1), acetaminophen (254 mg g−1), diclofenac (160 mg g−1), and antipyrine (213 mg g−1). In the treatment of heavy metal solutions, the activation resulted in the highest performance with Pb2+ (100 mg g−1) and was more limited with Cu2+, Ni2+, and Zn2+ when compared to the non-activated char. 2026-03-10T11:13:53Z 2026-03-10T11:13:53Z 2026 journal article Arjona, L.; Blázquez García, G.; Calero De Hoces, F. M.; Martín Lara, M. A. & Rodríguez Solís, R. (2026). Valorization of jeans waste into activated carbon through thiosulfate activation. Sustainable Materials and Technologies, 48, e01943. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.susmat.2026.e01943 2214-9929 2214-9937 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/112014 10.1016/j.susmat.2026.e01943 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Elsevier