Motor vehicle exhaust carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emission content reduction by banana peel activated carbon

Air pollution caused by motor vehicle exhaust emissions produced gases such as carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrocarbon (HC) that are dangerous for health of living things. Those gases can be adsorbed with activated carbon made from agricultural waste such as banana peel because it has quite high lignocellulose content and available in large amount in Indonesia. Activated carbon from banana peel in this research was used the AC made in previous studies which has 617 mg/g and 614 mg/g surface area for chemically activated AC and chemical and physical activation combined respectively. The characterization of activated carbon was done by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX) tests which resulted that the pore on AC surface was visually clear and the AC contained up to 88% of carbon, respectively. Chemical-activated carbon with H2SO4 6 N was capable of adsorbing 40.46% CO and 31.51% HC respectively. While physical-chemical activated carbon with H2SO4 6 N was capable of adsorbing 56.27% CO and 42.63% HC. The banana peel waste was proven to be a promising adsorbent raw material to reduce pollutant contents in environment.