Hollow Activated Carbon from Kapok for biodiesel production from waste cooking oil Jeyashelly Andas(a,*), Nur Adilah Zahari (a)
a Faculty of Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 02600 Arau, Perlis, Malaysia
Abstract
This study introduces hollow activated carbon from kapok (Ceiba pentandra) which were prepared using KOH (CB1) and K2CO3 (CB2) as the activating agents at 1:1.0 (raw kapok: KOH or K2CO3), impregnation time 15 min and activation temperature of 400°C. The iodine number, quantified by Sodium Thiosulphate volumetric titration and percentage yield of CB1 (1446.30 mg/g, 62.60%) was higher compared to CB2 (1200.23 mg/g, 53.50%) which confirmed the effectiveness of KOH as the activating agent. The raw material and prepared activated carbons were characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and CHNS/O Analyzer. Absence of certain functional groups were observed for the activated carbons compared to the raw kapok, resulting from the carbonization and activation processes. CHNS/O Analyzer confirmed the increase in carbon content of CB1 (63.93%) and CB2 (62.86%) compared to the raw kapok (43.54%). Hollow tube were viewed from the SEM analysis for all the samples. CB1 and CB2 were evaluated in the transesterification of waste cooking oil (WCO) using 0.2 wt.% catalyst, methanol to oil molar ratio of 3:1 at 60˚C for only 1 h. The percentage of biodiesel yield increased in a trend as given: without catalyst (35.46%) < CB2 (87.46%) < CB1 (89.57%). High catalysis of CB1 was presumably due to its high surface area and high carbon content compared to CB2. This study was successful as it introduces a facile and cheap conversion of waste kapok into promising catalyst for green synthesis of biodiesel.
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