Obtención y caracterización de carbón activado a partir de cáscara de jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophillus) mediante activación ácida y básica

Abstract

The objective of this research was to obtain activated carbon from jackfruit (artocarpus heterophyllus) peel by acid and basic activation. Once the jackfruit peel was dried and crushed, 389.78g of the ground peel were introduced into the batch reactor for the first carbonization and 352.30g for the second, at a carbonization temperature of 450 degrees Celsius. A total of 420ml of H3PO4 and 280ml of ZnCl2 in aqueous solutions were needed for the activation process. In the characterization of the activated carbon, FTIR Infrared Spectroscopy techniques were used to identify the presence of functional groups. The adsorption capacity of the carbon as a function of pH started with a wash, adding drops of a Na(OH) solution, obtaining the pH of the washed carbons and subsequently the final pH results of the cadmium solutions with ZnCl2 and H3PO4 at different agitation times were identified. The yield of the process was 34.02%. For carbon activation, ZnCl2 was found to be the best activator as a function of the pH change of the filtered cadmium solutions. It is confirmed with FTIR that in the activation with ZnCl2 the wave number 1867.72cm-1 is observed as initial signal being a region of the baseline where few adsorption bands occur. The most common band was for atmospheric CO2, the presence of R-OH groups was not evidenced. Adsorption analysis concluded that ZnCl2-activated carbon maintained the pH within range, a standard deviation of 1.27 pH and minor dispersion in the results. The usefulness of activated carbon for the development of new water treatment techniques based on organic raw material is important nowadays. It is recommended to give an added value to agricultural residues to obtain new products.