Suitability of Biochar Produced from Biomass Waste as Soil Amendment

Conversion of biomass waste to a useful product has been extensively studied to compensate its abundance in quantity and combat current environmental pollution issue. Of the biomass listed comes from agriculture industry; empty fruit bunch (EFB). This study was conducted to investigate the suitability of this waste as soil amendment in improving soil quality. The waste is converted to biochar by mean use of pyrolysis technique. Pyrolysis temperature was varied to 400 degrees C, 500 degrees C and 600 degrees C and the physiochemical properties were analyzed. The results obtained from this study indicate that as the pyrolysis temperature increases, the BET surface area of pores available on EFB biochar decreases. Besides, only small amount of biochar can be produced at high pyrolysis temperature. Several bands or peak diminished from the FTIR spectra of EFB biochar as the temperature rises. From the result also, it was observed biochar that was produced at 400 degrees C pose a characteristic of high yield (50.60%), high fixed carbon content (31.89%) and with suitable morphological features such as high pore volume with better surface area which is important for carbon sequestration. At higher pyrolysis temperature, the crystalline structure of the biochar gradually decreases due to the lower in peak value of cellulose and lignin wavelength in XRD analysis. Besides, it is very alkaline (pH 10.88) which is suitable in neutralizing soil acidity and it contains high CEC value (35 meq/100g) which is believed suitable to increase soil fertility. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.