Chemical Approach for the Synthesis of Nanofibers from Sugar Palm Fiber as a Functional Adsorbent Modified with Cobalt Oxide to Remove Dye Waste

Abstract

The waste of palm sugar fiber from the home industry of glass noodles reaches 25 tons/day and has not been used economically regardless of the content of its cellulose about 52%. With the high content of cellulose, palm sugar fiber can be synthesized as a functional adsorbent to overcome the environmental issues that arise. The synthesis of nanofiber was carried out in several steps including washing the sample to remove dirt, synthesizing using a chemical approach (NaOH, HCl, NaClO2, and CH3COOH), and modifying the nanofiber surface with 3% and 5% cobalt oxide. The characterization showed that palm sugar fiber was successfully transformed into nanofiber based on XRD, FTIR, dan SEM results. The removal of dye waste was observed, showing that the adsorption capacity of nanofiber modified with 5% cobalt oxide calcined at 400 °C for 2 hours was suitable for methylene blue removal compared to congo red up to 9.162 mg/g. The adsorption followed the pseudo-second-order kinetic model with Langmuir adsorption isotherm.