Characteristic of Oil Palm Activated Carbon Produced from Microwave and Conventional Heating

Malaysia has been acknowledged as one of the largest producer and exporter in the production of oil palm biomass. This is not surprisingly that industry contributes massive amount of the waste such as empty fruit bunches, palm mesocarpfibre, and palm kernel shell. This abundance of oil palm by-products make them an attractive source of raw material for the production of activated carbon. The activated carbon has been widely used in variety industries such as bio-catalyst, removal of toxic substance, purification of liquid and gas as well as catalyst support. The comparison of characteristic of oil palm activated carbon produced via microwave and conventional heating has been discussed in this paper. The characterization of the activated carbon includes elemental analysis, the Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET) surface area as well as Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) has been analyzed in this study.Hence, from the result, it shows that the SEM micrograph of oil palm shell (OPS) activated carbon prepared via microwave heating by using chemical activation produced the clearly and uniformly pore compared to full cavity and not well formed of pore in oil palm shell (OPS) activated carbon via conventional heating.