Study of adsorption of cobalt nitrate in oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB) fibres: article / Nina Suhaila Nor Wahid

Fossil fuel downturn has created an attention for researchers to discover new fuels substitution for future generation. Impregnation of metals onto biomass has been utilized as feedstocks for producing bioproducts by thermal conversion such as pyrolysis. In this study, investigation is made on the adsorption of Cobalt (II) Nitrate from aqueous solution onto shredded oil palm empty fruit bunch (SOPEFB) fibres via varying important parameters such as contact time and initial metal concentration. The SOPEFB was soaked into Cobalt (II) Nitrate aqueous solution and the Co-loaded SOPEFB being digested to analyse the Cobalt concentration via ICP-OES. The contact time was varied between 2 to 48 hours and the adsorption of Cobalt was observed that achieve an equilibrium at the last 24 hours. The adsorption isotherm was fitted well with Freundlich model with correlation coefficient, R2 of 0.9976. The study also reveals that adsorption of Cobalt occurs thru multilayer heterogeneous SOPEFB fibres surface. Besides, the Co-loaded SOPEFB was aimed to produce biooil by catalytic slow pyrolysis. The experiment showed the best fit temperature for catalytic pyrolysis was at 500°C as it yielded the most liquid oil. Then, catalytic slow pyrolysis was set up at 500°C and it displayed that liquid yields in catalytic pyrolysis was slightly reduced compared to nonimpregnated SOPEFB fibres due to further catalytic cracking had occurred onto biomass to form more gas yields as soon it was produced at the particular temperature.