Synthesis of Nanoparticles from Bamboo Charcoal

Abstract

The aim of this work is to synthesis nanoparticles from bamboo charcoal and identify the majority elements of the nanoparticles. The bamboo charcoal is made by pyrolysis process. The charcoal was manually pulverized before being sieved through a filter with a mesh size of 200. The synthesis of the nanoparticle was conducted by using a top-down approach of ball milling process. The charcoal powder that had passed through the filter and the milling balls of steel were then poured into a vial of glass. In the vial, the milling operation was carried out. The vial had a diameter of 71 mm and a length of 119 mm, while the ball's diameter was 0.25 inches. To have the balls collide and reduce the size of the charcoal particles, the vial was rotated. 5 million cycles at 500 revolutions per minutes were performed on the shaker machine. The empty space in the vial was one third of vial volume for the movement of the milling balls. The ball milling process was separated into two conditions, namely dry and wet. For the wet procedure, the particles are filtered to separate the particles based on their size. The particle morphology, size, and elements in the particle produced by the process were examined using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and an Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX). The results showed that the size of the particles of the dry procedure is un-uniform in the range of about 300 nm to 600 nm with irregular shape. The dominant element is carbon. The wet procedure produced a more uniform size in the range of 100 nm to 200 nm with also irregular shape. The most dominant element is also carbon.