Search

Palm Oil Fuel Ash (POFA) is produced from the burning of palm oil solid waste biomass. POFA is abundant in Indonesia considering that Indonesia is one of the world’s largest producers of Crude Palm Oil (CPO) and has the largest palm oil plantation. The main content of POFA is SiO2 around 60%, Al2O3 around 3-10% and CaO around 5-15% so that POFA has the potential to be developed as aluminosilicate inorganic polymers. The high SiO2/Al2O3 ratio in POFA needs to be reduced for the formation of Si-O-Al chains in geopolymers. Therefore, two stages of research were carried out. Preliminary research was conducted to obtain optimum Solid/Liquid ratio. Aluminum powder was then added with certain variations to get a certain SiO2/Al2O3 ratio as well as a foaming agent so that the product can later be used as a porous building material. The preliminary results showed that the optimum Solid/Liquid ratio obtained was 0.83. The addition of aluminum powder was optimum at 2% w/w with a compressive strength of 5.4233 MPa, a density of 1339.2175 kg/m3, and a thermal conductivity of 0.6233 Watt/m°K. This geopolymer product can be categorized as a lightweight building material with criteria: a compressive strength of 0.5-10 MPa, densities between 600-1800 Kg/m3, and a thermal conductivity of 0.1-0.7 Watt/m°K which can be used as panels in buildings, casting walls, and ornaments in parks.

Pineapple crown leaf was successfully converted to the magnetized activated carbon (MAC) as an attractive solution to overcome separation problems. The activated carbon (AC) was produced by an innovative method combining KOH activation and microwave heating while the magnetization process was prepared by a co-precipitation method. In this sense, the activation stage was studied at different impregnation ratio. The resulted magnetic adsorbent was further tested its feasibility for methyl violet dye removal. The result shows that MAC consists of both micropores and mesopores with more oxygen-containing functional groups, indicating it can be used to remove dye from contaminated water. The increase of impregnation ratio led to an increase in the MAC porosity and a decrease in the magnetic property. The adsorption behavior of methyl violet dye onto MAC was well described by the Redlich-Peterson isotherm model.

Chitosan has been widely used as polymer matrix for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) application replacing Nafion which has shortcomings in terms of high methanol permeability that degrades the performance of fuel cells. Chitosan membranes modification is performed by adding nanosilica to prevent methanol transport through the membrane. Nanosilica is synthesized by sol-gel method and the particle diameter is obtained by analysis using Breunner Emmet Teller (BET) that is 6.59 nm. Nanosilica is mixed with chitosan solution to obtain nanosilica-chitosan as polymer electrolyte membrane. The membranes are synthesized through phase inversion method with nanosilica composition including 0; 0.5; 1; 2; 3; 5; and 10% w/w of chitosan. Characterization of the membranes indicate that the results of water swelling, proton conductivity and methanol permeability of the membrane with 3% nanosilica respectively were 49.23%, 0.231 S/cm, and 5.43 x 10−7 cm2/s. Based on the results of membrane selectivity calculation, the optimum membrane is the composition of 3% nanosilica with value 5.91 x 105 S s cm−3. The results of functional groups analysis with FTIR showed that it was only physical interaction that occurred between chitosan and nanosilica since no significant changes found in peak around the wave number 1000-1250 cm−-1.

In this research, chitosan/silica/polyethylene glycol (Ch/Si/P) composites membrane was studied for selective adsorbent of Pb(II) from aqueous solution. This study started by preparation of Ch/Si/P composites membrane. The structure and surface morphology of Ch/Si/P composites membrane was characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier Transform Infra Red (FTIR) spectroscopy, and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Batch adsorption experiments were conducted with various contact time and Pb(II) concentrations to evaluate the adsorption kinetics and thermodynamics. Results show that adsorption fitted to Langmuir model and followed a kinetic model of pseudo-second-order. The adsorption capacity of Pb(II) onto the Ch/Si/P composites membrane is 0.16 mmol/g. The relative selective factor (αf) value of Pb(II)/Rhodamine B is 2.38. This means that Pb(II) can be determined even in the presence of Rhodamine B interference.

Electrolyte membrane is an important component in fuel cell system, because it may influence fuel cell performance. Many efforts have been done to produce electrolyte membrane to replace comercial membrane. In this research, electrolyte membrane is composed of chitosan as an organic matrix and fly ash modified with CTAB and silane as inorganic filler. Fly ash is modified using silane as coupling agent to improve interfacial morphology between organic matrix and inorganic filler. This research aims to determine the best membrane performance based on its characteristics such as water uptake, mechanical properties, proton conductivity, and methanol permeability. The steps that have been done include silica preparation from fly ash, modification of silica surface with CTAB, silica coupling process with silane, synthesis of membranes with inversion phase method, and membrane characterization. The result shows that membrane C-FA/CTAB-Silane 10% (w/w) has the best performance with proton conductivity 8.00 x 10-4 S.cm-1, methanol permeability 3.37 x 10-7 cm.s-1, and selectivity 2.12 x 103 S.s.cm-3. The result of FTIR analysis on membrane C-FA/CTAB-Silane 10% shows that there is only physical interaction occured between chitosan, fly ash and silane, because there is no peak differences significantly at wave number 1000-1250 cm-1, while morphology analysis on membrane with Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) shows good dispersion and there is no agglomeration on chitosan matrix.