Particle Characterization of Bamboo Leaves Charcoal Resulted by Ball Milling

Received: 7 November 2019 Accepted: 21 December 2019 The aim of this work is to characterize particle of bamboo leaves charcoal produced by ball milling process. The characterization parameter are the particle size and the morphology of the particle. The milling process was completed in a cylinder vial made from stainless steel. The milling element was a steel ball. The dimension of the cylinder vial was 120 mm length and 1 inch diameter, while the ball diameter was 0.25 inch. The charcoal was crushed manually then sieved with a filter size of 200 meshes. The particles passing the filter were then put together with the milling balls into cylinder vial. The cylinder vial was shaken to have ball collision for the size reduction. The shaker machine was operated at 1000 rpm for 2 million cycles. The empty space in the vial was varied for 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 and 1/5 empty space of vial volume. Further work is done to see the effect of the machine speed to the characteristics of particles. The machine is operated at 800 rpm, 900 rpm, 1100 rpm for 1/5 empty space and 0.25 inch ball diameter. Particle size analyzer (PSA) was used to measure average particle size, while Scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) were employed to see the particle morphology and the content of elements in the bamboo leaf charcoal. The results showed that the average size of particles is in the range of 300 nm to 600 nm. There is no certain relationship between final particle size and percentage of vial volume empty space. The SEM results showed that the particle shape is irregular as a result of fracture due to collision. The most dominant element is carbon which is more than 60% and the second is silicon dioxide (silica) which is more the 20%.