Performance of Activated Carbon Made from Gigantochloa verticillata Bamboo for Biogas Purification

Abstract

Biogas is known to contain mainly methane (CH4), and other gas impurities such as carbon dioxide (CO2), and hydrogen sulfide (H2S). Biogas should be purified to remove gas impurities prior to be used as a fuel. Activated carbon is a famous biogas purifier. Commercial activated carbons are found expensive due to high cost during production. New routes for low cost production of activated carbon are still in progress. Many natural sources were explored for production of low cost and good quality activated carbon. One of the natural sources of raw material of activated carbon is bamboo. The bamboo from species of Gigantochloa verticillata from the tropical source of Indonesia was prepared for this purpose. The bamboo was cut from the tree, dried under the sun and cut to small pieces. The dried small pieces of bamboo cut were carbonized at 700 °C for 1.5 hours in air-tight chamber made from steel. The sample then was crushed and screen in 3 different particle sizes, namely: 150-250 mesh, 250-350 mesh and 350-450 mesh. About 100 gram of carbonized bamboo from these three variations were activated at 750°C for 1 hour in around 5100 cm3 steel chamber with nitrogen gas (N2) was flowed with rate 350 ml/minute. The result of activated carbon were analyzed by using TGA (thermo gravimetric analyses) for moisture, volatile, ash and fixed carbon composition test. The activated carbon then was set in acrylic tube for biogas purification. Around 200 liters of raw biogas were collected in PVC bag. The biogas was flowed with flow rate 500 mL/minute. The biogas composition before and after passing the activated carbon was measured in three time repetitions. The results indicate that the activated carbon made from Gigantochloa verticillata bamboo developed in this work is promising biogas purifier.