Effect of calcination parameters on the silica phase of bamboo leaves

Abstract

Silica is known as one of the most abundance elements in the earth’s crust. Silica is used primarily in various industrial application such as in construction industry, ceramic, electronic and etc. The production of silica is depends on its purity and physical characteristics. Apparently, high purity of silica also particularly reported found in agricultural waste such as rice husk, sugarcane baggase, wheat husk, bamboo and etc. Thus, silica can be used in replacing the commercial silica precursors as it is more safer, cheaper and environmental friendly. Bamboo leaf is known as one of the agro-waste that can be a potential source of silica. It also has been reported to contain 13-14 wt% of silica. Hence, there is a proper strategy to reduce the waste as it can be used in other application because of its specialty in having a high amount of silica. This waste need disposed properly, otherwise it may cause a major environmental sustainable issue. The large amount of this waste can be a new source of silica production in this country. In this study, silica will be extracted using deionized water in leaching treatment in 4 hours at room temperature. High purity of silica content will then be produced by using calcination process at various parameters. The raw and calcined bamboo leaves ash were analyzed using X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) to determine the percentages of silica content in each sample. From the XRF testing, result indicates that high purity of silica is found at temperature 700⁰C in calcination process. Then, the raw and silica content in bamboo leaves ash at 700⁰C is being identified by using Fourier Transform Spectroscopy (FTIR) the presence of functional group in molecules of bamboo leaves ash and Scanning Electron Microscopy(SEM) analysis is being performed using raw bamboo leaves ash and highest silica content sample to identify of its surface morphology