Preparation and characterization of a new biocarbon material derived from Macaranga gigantea (giant ‘Mahang’) leaf biomass as precursor

Abstract

This study presents the preparation of biocarbon material from Macaranga gigantea leaf biomass. In an attempt to examine its potential as adsorbent, the most essential part in determining the performance is to investigate their physicochemical properties. The physicochemical properties of the prepared biocarbon was characterized by their adsorptive nature towards methylene blue and iodine to estimate their surface area and pore volumes. The present study focused on the adsorption performance comparison of three different forms of pyrolyzed biomass which were granulated coconut shell (GCS), powdered coconut shell (PCS), and powdered Mahang leaves (PML), respectively to remove both methylene blue (MB) dye and iodine in aqueous solution. The iodine number for PML showed greater difference compared to PCS and GCS following range PML(557.72)>PCS(321.91)>GCS(188.14). The findings indicate that powdered biomass had higher adsorption for methylene blue dye than granulated biomass at all various initial concentration used due to higher surface area. Among which, PML has higher MB removal by 86.41% at initial concentration 50 mg/L. The data of MB adsorption of GCS and PML fitted well with the Freundlich model meanwhile Langmuir model was applicable for describing the adsorption data of PCS