Characterization of carbonized waste materials: Rice husk and saw dust

Abstract

Waste materials can be categorized into household, commercial, agricultural, synthetic wastes, and so on. Agricultural wastes play a great role as an alternative material to be derived into valuable carbon materials, due to their low cost and abundancy, in contrast to conventional carbon material sources. Feasible carbonization process of agricultural wastes can be conducted by using heat treatment. The focused agricultural wastes in this study are rice husks (RH) and saw dusts (SD). They are converted into carbon materials through heat treatment under the presence of inert gas at 500°C and 800°C for 2 hours. Then, their characteristics such as structure, morphology, elemental composition, and crystallinity are investigated by utilizing scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, and X-ray Diffraction (XRD). Similarly, the carbonized RHs and SDs can be classified as amorphous carbon and possess porous structure. The characteristics of carbonized RHs and SDs indicate that they could be a promising material to be utilized in particular or various applications.