Obtención y caracterización de materiales adsorbentes a partir de cascarilla de arroz

Abstract

Agricultural waste management for the production of materials with specific uses is important for the remediation of certain environmental problems. Rice husk, an abundantly agricultural waste in Colombia, could be a low cost adsorbent for molecules such as dyes or heavy metals in effluent streams. In this research, we address the production and characterization of rice husk ash obtained by chemical activation with phosphoric acid as an adsorbent material. The physical-chemical properties of the materials were evaluated using different characterization techniques, such as close analysis, iodine number, adsorption of methylene blue, adsorption-desorption of nitrogen, analysis of the functional groups on the surface of the adsorbent through infrared spectroscopy (ftir), as well as an analysis of the morphology with scanning electron microscopy (sem). The materials have a surface area around 320 m2 /g, which decreases depending on the amount of acid used in the activation. The pore size in the studied samples ranged between 4 and 12 nm, which suggest that mesoporous solids were obtained. Regarding the adsorption of methylene blue, results show that the production of the activated ashes from rice husk as adsorbent materials is viable, presenting a new opportunity for the use of materials considered as agricultural waste.