Preparation of palm oil ash nanoparticles: Taguchi optimization method by particle size distribution and morphological studies

Abstract

The interest in the utilization of palm oil ash is high, mainly due to their renewable material, opportunity to enhance the properties and possibility to use in a wide range of applications. Palm oil ash is the by-product of the palm oil mill boilers and locally available in the form of micro-size particles. In this research, optimization of the milling process was designed using the Taguchi method to find the most influencing parameters for the preparation of palm oil ash (POA) nanoparticles using a ball milling technique. The experiment was applied using a L9 orthogonal array and signal to noise ratio to investigate the performance of parameters, which are milling time, milling speed, and balls size. The results from signal to noise ratio reveal that to produce POA nanoparticles in optimum parameters, the size of balls shows the highest significant effect on the production of POA nanoparticles, followed by milling time and speed. The results of the parameters optimization experiment were validated by a confirmation test of milling machine operations.