Characterization of Activated Carbon Prepared From Wadyetia Bifurcata Fruit and Its Application in Dye Adsorption

Dyes are extensively used in many industries, however the disposed dye into the environment can causes major environmental problems due to the chemical properties of dye. Thus, the dye adsorption by activated carbon prepared from foxtail palm fruit was studied. Besides that, the characteristic of raw materials, activated carbon and treated activated carbon was determined. Nitric acid was used as activating agent in this experiment, with impregnation time of 24 hours and 500°C of two and half hours carbonization. The synthetic dye, Methylene Blue was prepared and used to determine the adsorption capability of foxtail fruit activated carbon. Characterizations namely yield, weight loss, proximate analysis, functional group and surface pores and texture were investigated and determined in this experiment. In addition, the functional group and surface pores and texture were been compared within raw materials, activated carbon and treated activated carbon using FTIR and SEM. Hydroxyl and carboxyl functional groups are among the importance group for effective adsorption that were found in the foxtail fruit activated carbon. Highly developed and distributed pores that were determined in foxtail fruit activated carbon also increased adsorption. Thus, the adsorption capacity of foxtail fruit activated carbon was very high with 96.94% of average adsorption. The results were obtained.