Acid treatment on rice husk in pome treatment

Palm oil industry is an important industry in Malaysia as it is one of the biggest contributors to Malaysia’s economy. With the expansion of palm oil industry, the pollution caused by the industry also increase. The main problem with palm oil plantation is its mill effluent known as POME. There are many treatments available to treat the effluent but the problem is it is not environmental friendly. The most efficient way available to treat the effluent is by adsorption treatment. Adsorption treatment usually uses activated carbon as its adsorbent. However, usage of activated carbon has many drawbacks such as regeneration problem. Thus, this research is focusing on environmental friendly alternative to the usage of activated carbon which is agricultural waste, rice husk. Rice husk exists abundantly throughout the world at low price. It can be used as replacement to activated carbon but it needs to be treated first to overcome its drawback such as low adsorption capacity and low hydrophobicity. The fibre is treated with strong acid, sulphuric acid to increase its hydrophobicity and sorption capacity. The mass of rice husk used for modification was varied from 5g, 10g and 15g. The rice husk was modified by using 0.5M, 1.0M, 1.5M, and 2.0M of sulphuric acid. The oil adsorption capacity of the rice husk was determined by using nhexane extraction method. The optimum condition of oil adsorption capacity was obtained when 5g of rice husk was modified with 0.5M sulphuric acid. The percentage of oil removed by 5g unmodified adsorbent was 42.67% while for 5g adsorbent modified with 0.5M was 72.91%. Thus, it can be concluded that the sorption capacity can be improved when the adsorbent undergo acid treatment.