Projects

Alisa Vethviharntham, Napassorn Tunviya, Wanatchaporn Arunmanee and Myra Halpin "Charcoal from Coat of Para Rubber Seeds Uniquely Exhibits a High Level of Porosity with an Excellent Property in Adsorbing Chemicals", Proceedings of the Thailand - Japan Student Science Fair 2015. [pdf]

Abstract

Para rubber trees (Hevea brasiliensis) grow well in many parts of Thailand. Rubber latex and the rubber wood have been widely used for the production of many materials and furniture. However, there are other parts of this plant that are yet to be explored for their values. We are interested in making charcoal from its seed coats and studying the chemical properties of the charcoal. The charcoal from seed coats were made by using a pyrolysis carbonization reactor at 400 ºC for 20 hr. and having a N2 flow at a rate of 100 mL/min. The resulted charcoal has a high level of porosity as revealed by a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Pore sizes range from 1.7 to 15.0 μm with the most abundant pore size around 7.8 μm. X-Ray microanalysis (EDX) showed that the charcoal contained C at the highest level of 86.1 %, followed by O, K, and Al at, 12.7, 1.1, and 0.1 %, respectively. The charcoal could remove methylene blue (MB) from a solution rapidly with high capacity. The objective of this study is to convert agricultural waste into charcoal for the adsorption of harmful chemicals.
Keywords: rubber seed coat, charcoal, adsorption