Pre-characterization of mangrove-based charcoal / Hasmaliza Alias

Project paper (Bachelor of Chemical Engineering) -- Universiti Malaysia Pahang – 2012

Bibliography : p. 34-35

In the last decade public awareness and concern over the quality of drinking water has resulted in more and more consumers turning to point of use devices for treating water to their own desired level of quality. This is reflected in the market for home water filters, designed to remove objectionable tastes and odours and organic contaminants from water, which has experienced substantial growth. Adsorption is the process of transferring material from a fluid phase to a solid phase. Adsorption is a separation process in which some materials; (adsorbate) is concentrated from a bulk vapour or liquid phase on to the surface of a porous solid (adsorbent). Study was performed based on charcoal. The main objectives of this study are to investigate the characteristic of mangrove-based charcoal on operating parameters (heating temperature and heating time). In this experiment, the adsorption of methylene blue also studied on the effect of initial concentration and contact time. In this study, the equipment such as furnace and Ultraviolet-Visible Spectrophotometer (UV-VIS) were used to run the experiment. Four parameters were investigated in this research, which are the heating time, heating temperature, effect of initial concentration and effect contact time. From the experiment the mangrove trunk was fully burned to be charcoal at 500 ºC for 3 hours. The highest percentage of MB removal is at 40 ppm which is equal to 87.7% for initial concentration and the highest percentage of contact time is at 60 minutes which is the MB removal is 99.28 %. In order to make the charcoal, it is very important that the temperature of the furnace is controlled accordingly. Too high, the mangrove will turn into ashes, too low; they will not turn into quality charcoal that burn efficiently.