Effect of Texture and Surface Chemistry of Palm Nut Hull Activated Carbon on the Adsorption of Pigments and Free Fatty Acids from Vegetable Oils

Activated carbons were produced from palm nut hull,which is a waste material of palm oil extraction industries.Activated carbons having various pore size distributions and surface composition were obtained by conventional carbonization method via the sulphuric acid solution pre-treatment method.The surface areas,mesopore volume and-OH groups of activated carbons increase with the increases of sulphuric acid solution concentration.The activated carbons obtained were tested for the adsorption of pigments and free fatty acids from palm oil and shea butter.It comes out from this study that the amount of adsorbate(i.e.pigments and free fatty acids)fixed increases with the increase of the adsorption temperature and with the increases of mesopore volume.Intraparticle diffusion,pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order kinetics models were used to analyze the kinetics data obtained at different temperatures(temperature range 60℃ to 90℃).Among the kinetics models used,the pseudo-second order was the best applicable model to describe the adsorption of oil pigments and free fatty acid onto activated carbons.The activation energies obtained by applying the Arrhenius equation for the adsorption of pigments were low(i.e.less than 40 kJ·mol^-1 for the both vegetables oils),indicating that the adsorption could be assigned to physisorption.