RESISTIVITY OF CARBON FROM OIL PALM BUNCHES - PERCOLATION THEORY

Because they are cheap and available in very large quantities as a waste material from palm oil mills, oil palm empty fruit bunches can be seen as a potentially valuable starting material for manufacturing solid carbon products, which are widely used in the field of electrical engineering. In this context it was therefore important to study the electrical properties of carbon prepared from empty fruit bunches. The electrical resistivity of carbon pellets prepared from empty fruit bunch fibres at carbonization temperatures up to 1000-degrees-C was measured and compared with predicted values derived from the granular model and percolation theory. The measured and predicted values were 7.75 x 10(-2) and 8.57 x 10(-2) OMEGA cm respectively. The small difference between these values seems to justify the supposition that at a carbonization temperature of 1000-degrees-C the critical volume traction and the constants rho1 and t for carbon prepared from the endocarp of babasu coconut can be used in calculating the predicted values when the carbonization conditions used to prepare samples are nearly identical, even though empty fruit bunches and the endocarp of babasu coconut are obtained from different organs and plants.