Membranes adsorber from oil palm empty fruit branches (OPEFB): preparation and fabrication

Abstract

Oil Palm empty fruit branches (OPEFB) are solid waste that are numerous produced from palm oil mills. OPEFB is economically and potentially used as membrane adsorber material due to has good thermal stability, chemical resistance and biodegradability. The objectives of this work is to preparate and fabricate the OPEFB membrane adsorber which is activated by physical activation. The OPEFB has been cleaned and dried, subsequently heated at 500 °C for 30 min via pyrolysis. The activated OPEFB was sieved using 200-400 mesh and followed by the addition of 2-propanol, NH4Cl, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) to become a mixture. The activated OPEFB ratio were varied in the mixtures to obtain the best composition in order to produce a good membrane adsorber texture for casting. FTIR shows on wavenumber at 1082 cm−1 indicates that there is O-H stretching functional groups and bands at 943 cm−1 correspons to C=O functional group. It is concluded that the membrane mixtures can be employed as membrane adsorber due to carbon content which creates strong matrix applied for gas separation.