Sugarcane Bagasse as a Renewable Source of Silica to Synthesize Santa Barbara Amorphous-15 (SBA-15)

Abstract

Sugarcane bagasse is an agricultural waste that is potentially used as natural silica resources. Natural silica claimed to be safe in handling, cheap and can be generate from cheap resource. In this study, Santa Barbara Amorphous-15 (SBA-15) was synthesized using sodium silicate that is extracted from Sugarcane bagasse ash (SCBA). Post treatment method using hydrochloric acid (HCl) was introduced during the silica extraction process to improve its purity. The result indicated that the amount of SiO2 present in the raw sugarcane bagasse ash was 53.10% while the silica composition in acid treatment sample was 88.13%. The FTIR pattern of extracted sodium silicate shows a similar spectrum with the commercial pattern of sodium silicate. While the Inductive Coupled Plasma (ICP) result shown that the concentration of silica in extracted sodium silicate was 4873 ppm. Then the extracted sodium silicate produce was used as a silica precursor in the synthesis of mesoporous silica, Santa Barbara Amorphous-15 (SBA-15). The formation of SBA-15 was characterized using X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The result indicated that the synthesis SBA-15 have present peaks 100, 110 and 200 which represent the hexagonal mesoporous material associated with p6 mm symmetry.