Plasma-assisted pyrolysis for converting oil palm fronds into reduced graphite oxide

Abstract

Abstract One of the oil palm tree’s solid waste is oil palm fronds. Due to its lignocellulosic composition, it has the potency to convert it into carbon. The common heat treatment method to convert oil palm fronds into carbon-based material is pyrolysis. However, this process has some disadvantages, such as being time-consuming and just producing amorphous carbon. Different from common pyrolysis temperatures, in this study we use a higher temperature (4000 °C) generated by DC current arc plasma. This process is faster than the common pyrolysis process (less than 10 minutes) and produces crystalline material. This product is then characterized by Raman spectroscopy, SAED-TEM, XRD, FT-IR, and SEM/EDX. Based on Raman spectroscopy, this crystalline material shows the characteristics of semiconductor carbon. Based on the SAED-TEM, there is a (002) plane of hexagonal crystal structure detected (graphite phase characteristics). An XRD analysis shows the characteristics of the trigonal crystal structure (P3) constructed by O and H atoms. An FT-IR characterization shows that there are C=C, C-H, and O-H bonds, while the EDX analysis result shows a carbon-to-oxygen ratio of about 4.23. Therefore, based on the whole interpretation, the plasma-assisted pyrolysis treatment is successfully used to convert oil palm fronds into reduced graphite oxide (rGO).