CARBONLETT, vol. 24, no. 1, pp.82-89, 2017

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/:10.5714/CL.

Physicochemical properties and methane adsorptionperformance of activated carbon nanofibers withdifferent types of metal oxides

Faten Ermala Che Othman1, Norhaniza Yusof^1,♠, Hasrinah Hasbullah¹, Juhana Jaafar¹, Ahmad Fauzi Ismail¹ and Noor Shawal Nasri²

Affiliation: ¹Advanced Membrane Technology Research Center (AMTEC), Faculty of Chemical & Energy Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia
²UTM-MPRC of Oil and Gas Institute, Faculty of Chemical & Energy Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor Bahru 81310, Malaysia

Abstract: In this study, composite PAN-based ACNFs embedded with MgO and MnO₂ were prepared by the electrospinning method. The resultant pristine ACNFs, ACNF/MgO and ACNF/MnO₂ were characterized in terms of their morphological changes, SSA, crystallinity and functional group with FESEM-EDX, the BET method, XRD and FTIR analysis, respectively. Results from this study showed that the SSA of the ACNF/MgO composite (1893 m² g^-1) is significantly higher than that of the pristine ACNFs and ACNF/MnO₂ which is 478 and 430 m² g^-1, respectively. FTIR analysis showed peaks of 476 and 547 cm^-1, indicating the presence of MgO and MnO₂, respectively. The FESEM micrographs analysis showed a smooth but coarser structure in all the ACNFs. Meanwhile, the ACNF/MgO has the smallest fiber diameter (314.38±62.42 nm) compared to other ACNFs. The presence of MgO and MnO₂ inside the ACNFs was also confirmed with EDX analysis as well as XRD. The adsorption capacities of each ACNF toward CH₄ were tested with the volumetric adsorption method in which the ACNF/MgO exhibited the highest CH₄ adsorption up to 2.39 mmol g^-1. Meanwhile, all the ACNF samples followed the pseudo-second order kinetic model with a R² up to 0.9996.

Keyword: activated carbon nanofibers, magnesium oxide, manganese dioxide, methane adsorption