The Study on Pyrolysis of Corn Stalks and Leaves as Food Additive

Abstract

The development in agricultural activity will produce an overflow of the waste. In the future, it will cause an environment issue thus it need a convertion technology to modify the waste useful product. Corn, for example, is one of agricultural plants which produces much waste such as leaf, husk, cob, stalk, stover, etc. These by product, off course, will be valuable if it could be used for food, feed or others. The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of temperature and catalyst percentage toward pyrolysis of corn stalk and leaves. Furthermore, the research was to know the contents liquid resulting form the pyrolysis of the corn leaves and stalk material whether it can be use for food additive. The best treatment was fixed by yield and the content of pyrolysis liquid. The first stage of this research was to determine the temperature of the operational pyrolysis using TGA. The process of the pyrolysis was conducted in the temperature range of 150-650ºC. There are two kind of process, with 1,5% catalyst and without catalyst. Furthermore, the amount of component which contained in liquid resulted from the pyrolysis was determined by using GC-MS. The last stage, it determined group and function from the components containing in that liquid. The best result was achieved at temperature of 350ºC, without catalyst and produced 17,035 g of liquid and 37,18 g of char. So far the pyrolysis without catalyst produced more liquid and char but less gass. In the meanwhile addition of 1,5% catalyst increased the amount of gass and decreased of liquid and char. GCMS identifed the component in the liquid as its group and function. Liquid resulted from the pyrolysis without catalyst contained more fenol group while the process with catalyst had more acid and fenol group. From the GC-MS analysist, it was comfirmed that the pirolysis without catalyst at temperature of 350ºC produced more components wich functioned as food additive, i.e. : p-cresol, pyrocatechol, vanillin, palmitic acid, and syringaldehide.