e-ISSN 2231-8542
ISSN 1511-3701
Nur Athirah Adam, Alawi Sulaiman, Azhari Samsu Baharuddin, Mohd Noriznan Mokhtar, Zainuri Busu and Tengku Elida Tengku Zainal Mulok
Pertanika Journal of Tropical Agricultural Science, Volume 25, Issue S, April 2017
Keywords: Mesoporous silica, palm oil fuel ash (POFA), palm oil mill
Published on: 21 Dec 2017
Palm Oil Fuel Ash (POFA) is a biomass produced from palm oil industries. POFA is known to contain a high amount of silica and has been proven by XRF spectroscopy, in which the silicon dioxide content is 72.63%. In this study, silica was synthesised from POFA. To extract the silica, POFA was fused with alkaline agent (Na2CO3) before mixing with Cethyltrimetyl Ammonium Bromide (CTAB) and Sulphuric Acid (H2SO4). Sodium silicate solution from the fusion was used as silica precursor replacing conventionally used silica source, Tetraethoxilane (TEOS). XRD pattern showed that raw POFA dominantly consists of silica. Meanwhile, FTIR analysis of the synthesised silica exhibited spectra bands at 3393 cm-1, 1635 cm-1, 1028 cm-1 and 787 cm-1 that corresponded to the functional groups of Si-O and O-H. Thus, it could be concluded that silica was successfully extracted from POFA by the alkaline fusion method.
ISSN 1511-3701
e-ISSN 2231-8542