Catalytic graphitization of Oil Palm Frond using iron and silica

Abstract

Graphitic carbon has raised great interest in many industrial areas including adsorbent, electrodes, hydrogen storage, and many more. This paper report simple method of transforming biomass waste into highly crystalline graphite. Graphitic structure is successfully obtained by direct transformation of lignocellulosic waste via simple methodology consist of (i) carbonization at 500 °C, (ii) impregnation of catalyst followed by thermal treatment by using Ferum and Silica as catalyst. A green biomass resource, Oil Palm Frond (OPF) was used as carbon precursor due to it abundant availability. This study is focusing on the correlation between the structural transformation of carbon material dependence on heat treatment temperature and catalyst dosage. Both Raman spectroscopy and XRD allowed the observation of microstructural change of the sample prepared at broad temperature ranges from 1000 °C to 1400 °C. From XRD pattern, sample prepared at higher amount of Ferum impregnated shows intensified peak at 2θ = 26.5° and it also shows that at higher heat treatment temperature sharper and narrower (0 0 2) peak observed. Indicating higher degree of graphitization was achieved. Raman spectrum also suggest accordance finding with XRD in which sample prepared without catalyst and with 40% catalyst at 1200 °C, show different Id/Ig value 1.05 and 0.4 respectively. Higher Id/Ig ratio indicate the presence of large amount of amorphous carbon. The comparison on heat treatment temperature also suggest that, at higher temperature lower Id/Ig ratio were observed. The sample were also analyse using FT-IR spectroscopy to study on change of functional group after graphitization. This result indicate significant correlation between temperature and catalyst ratio on degree of graphitization. Overall graphitic structure was successfully synthesis, it structural transformation can be tailored dependence on the synthesis condition.