Preparation and Characterization of Activated Carbon from Waste Food Packaging Wrappers

Abstract

Although recycling of waste plastic is one of the controlling measures of waste plastic, some plastics like food wrappers can’t be recycled. These finally lead to accumulation in landfills causing environmental problems. So alternate way to reduce this environmental pollution is converting them to activated carbon which not only reduce waste generation but also worth economical. Two methods were adopted to prepare activated carbon namely dry pyrolysis and wet pyrolysis. In dry pyrolysis the waste plastic wrapper was cut in small filings, taken into a crucible and pyrolysed directly in muffle furnace to produce char. The obtained char is activated with 1N KOH solution at optimized activation time of 23hrs and impregnation ratio (KOH : char) of 6:1. To carry out wet pyrolysis a pressure vessel was fabricated. It was impregnated with plastic and 200ml of 20% sulfuric acid which is pyrolysed in muffle furnace. The obtained activated char was characterized by several means such as EDX, XRD, FTIR, Iodine value, Methylene blue adsorption and FESEM which confirmed the production of activated carbon from plastics.