Nanopores Activated Carbon Rice Husk

Abstract

The study of activated carbons derived from agricultural wastes for instance coconut shell, rice husk, palm oil kernel, etc. has been vastly investigated coherent to promising used as ion storage, absorbent and also employed in energy generation. The activated carbon made from rice husk was selected for the study owing to large abundance of disposal and indicate potential to be transformed to advanced materials. The rice husk undergone sequence steps of carbonization and activation processes under inert atmosphere at the temperature low than 1000°C to form the activated carbon rice husk. The activated carbon rice husk obtained indicates high surface area of 2486 m2/g and porosity range under micropores less than to 2 nm. The further activation using carbon dioxide was not seen enhance the porosity of activated carbon rice husk to mesopores, but on the other hand the honeycomb structure of resultant activated carbon rice husk was observed collapsed with the increasing of soaking times during activation. The char or carbon was generated at the temperature above 400°C and the removal of volatile materials and moisture happened at the temperature less than 350°C according to the thermal behavior study on rice husk using thermogravimetric analyzer. The nanopores activated carbon rice husk provide useful data for further investigation on other types of agricultural wastes thus anticipated can reduce dependency on available engineered carbon.