A Preliminary Study of Synthesized Fluorescence Carbon

Nanoparticles from Lignin Residual Liquid

Averroes F. Piliang

, Saharman Gea

, Kerista Sebayang

, Dellyansyah

, Suhut A. Situmorang

, Noni

Oktari

, Siti Utari Rahayu

, Rachmad Fauzi

and Denny P. Indrawan

Department of Physics, Universitas Sumatera Utara, Jl. Bioteknologi No.1 Kampus USU Medan, Indonesia

Department of Chemistry, Universitas Sumatera Utara, Jl. Bioteknologi No.1 Kampus USU Medan, Indonesia

dennypratama96}@gmail.com

Keywords: Fluorescence Carbon Nanoparticle, Hydrothermal Treatments, Lignin Residual Liquid, Empty Bunches of

Palm Oil.

Abstract: Lignin residual liquid is a macromolecule compounds resulted from the delignification process of empty

bunches of palm oil within alkaline condition. This study reports the potential results of lignin residual

liquid as the precursor of fluorescence carbon nano-particles synthesized from heating treatments. The

characteristics of samples were tested by using FTIR, Spectrophotometry UV-Vis, and UV-lights

observation. The results showed that FTIR spectra confirmed the functional groups of hydroxyl, while the

visible spectrum displayed none absorbance. The UV spectrum displayed varied peaks from 214 to 319 nm

which indicated different absorbance features within highly alkaline condition, whereas green-neon colour

was shown under the UV-lights. This implies that various fluorescence properties occur from this study.

1 INTRODUCTION

Carbon dots (C-dots) synthesis from biomass

material has been widely considered as an

alternative solution due to renewability and

environmentally friendly. Many studies have

reported extensively in the use of fruits such as

apples(Mehta et al., 2015), bananas(De and Karak,

2013), grapes(Huang et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2015),

lemons and oranges(Ding et al., 2017; Tyagi et al.,

2016), while the use of daily-consumed goods such

as eggs, and dried shrimp are also concluded the

results of C-dots(D’Souza et al., 2016; Wang et al.,

2012). However, only a few studies reported the

industrial biomass as the precursor in synthesising

C-dots and those include cellulose(Gea et al., 2018;

Marpongahtun et al., 2018) and lignin. Therefore,

the use of industrial biomass is also one of the

potential strategies in producing this material.

Regarding to the properties, one of the most

promising characteristics of C-dots is its

fluorescence properties. The characteristics have

been mainly used for bio-imaging application. For

examples, HeLa cancer was detected by using C-

dots throughout in vitro (Li et al., 2010), while the in

vivo method was performed for the detection of

brain cancer and glioma within mice(Gao et al.,

2014; Goh et al., 2012; Zheng et al., 2015).

Therefore, finding the luminescence characteristic is

important during the synthesis of C-dots.

On the other hand, the most promising

methodology in synthesizing C-dots is still being

conducted. For instance, hydrothermal method has

been reported to yield 1-5 nm of C-dots(Qin et al.,

2013), while the microwave methodhas yielded C-

dots 2-4 nm (Bankoti et al., 2017). This implies to

the interesting implementation of heating process in

synthesizing C-dots. In short, in this study, it is

offered two-steps heating of lignin residual liquid to

generate fluorescence nanoparticles within short

time.

2 MARTERIALS AND METHODS

2.1 Materials

The empty fruit bunches of palm oil were collected

from local industries. Chemical reagents that were

used were distilled water and sodium hydroxide, in

which they were in analytical pure.

F. Piliang, A., Gea, S., Sebayang, K., Dellyansyah, ., A. Situmorang, S., Oktari, N., Utari Rahayu, S., Fauzi, R. and P. Indrawan, D.

A Preliminary Study of Synthesized Fluorescence Carbon Nanoparticles from Lignin Residual Liquid.

DOI: 10.5220/0010142800002775

In Proceedings of the 1st International MIPAnet Conference on Science and Mathematics (IMC-SciMath 2019), pages 263-266

ISBN: 978-989-758-556-2

263

2.2 Residual Lignin Liquid Isolation

An amount of empty fruit bunches of palm oilwere

collected from local industries. These bunches then

were cut randomly to be immersed within 2% of

sodium hydroxide (NaOH). Then, these immersed

samples were soaked for 24 hours which were

followed by steam explosion procedure for two

hours at 130

C within 170 kPa of pressure.

Afterwards, the separation of bunches fibres and

brownish liquid were obtained. Then, the liquid

samples were separated from the bunches, and they

were allowed to reach room temperature.

2.3 Synthesized C-dots

The procedures in synthesizing C-dots were

performed by two-steps heating. Firstly, 100 ml of

brownish samples were prepared, and this amount of

liquid was placed inside beaker glass to be heated at

100

C to reduce the water content. After the volume

of this liquid was reduced for 80%, the samples were

allowed to stand in reaching room temperature.

Next, this sample was placed into a furnace for

second heating treatments. 20% of residual heated

liquid samples which were inside a beaker glass

were covered by aluminium sheet. The beaker glass

was placed inside a furnace tube at 180

C for one

hour. After an hour of treatment was completed, the

sample was allowed to stand to reach room

temperature. The sample was poured with 50 ml of

distilled water and it was constantly stirred to get

dissolved. Next, the samples were placed within

centrifuge at 10,000 rpm for 15 minutes to remove

larger particles. Finally, the amount of centrifuged

liquids was placed in a beaker glass.

2.4 Characterisations

The samples were characterized by using FTIR,

Spectrophotometer UV-Vis, and photographic

observation under daylight and UV-light. To perform

this, the preparation was carried out by dissolving 2

ml of samples with 15 ml of distilled water.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Experimental Results

The process of synthesizing was one of the critical

features. As residual lignin liquid was resulted from

the steam explosion, the 2% of sodium hydroxide

indicated the high contents of water. Therefore, the

reduction of water contents was important due to the

heating process. It was found that during the first

step of heating, the dilution of the liquid sample

became denser. In this study, the water content was

not determined in further investigation because of

the focus of this study in the methodology.

The second heating process generated green-

shaped which resembled to dried-green algae. This

shape was interesting due to the previous phase that

was in dense liquid. However, after being poured by

distilled water, the samples developed into black

solution with several colloids. The centrifugation

process resulted the black condition with less

colloids implying to the higher solubility within the

solution.

3.2 FTIR Analysis Results

To ensure both the solubility and C-dots, FTIR

analysis was performed to do the investigation.

Figure 1: FTIR Spectra of Sample and Lignin.

The following Figure 1 displays the FTIR spectra

of lignin and the samples.According to Figure 1, it

can be observed that there was alteration in range of

2500-2000 cm

-1

. In this range, the functional groups

that were changed were triple bond region of carbon

(C≡C). The differences in absorbance implied to the

alteration, whereas the results.

3.3 UV-Vis Spectrum Results

The results of UV-Vis were performed to investigate

the ability of photoluminescence properties. The

following Figure 2 and Figure 3 demonstrate the

UV-Visible spectrophotometric results.

IMC-SciMath 2019 - The International MIPAnet Conference on Science and Mathematics (IMC-SciMath)

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Figure 2: Visible Spectrophotometric Results.

Figure 3: UV Absorption of Samples.

The spectrophotometric results demonstrated that

the visible light had no absorption at all, while the

UV light absorption showed the possibility of

fluorescence particle. Interestingly, samples that

were dissolved within 15 ml of distilled water had

14 of pH. The base condition indicated the potential

possibility of fluorescence properties which were

based on the pH. The following Figure 4 below

showed the different observation of samples under

daylight and UV-lamp.

Based on Fig. 4, the different colours were

displayed from the picture. Under the daylight, the

colour was similar to brown, while under UV-light,

it emitted the yellow colour.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The use of residual liquid lignin has shown the

potential precursor for synthesising C-dots, and the

FTIR analysis reported the alteration in triple bonds

chains. Furthermore, the UV spectrophotometric

results confirmed the possible different UV-light

based on the pH.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors would like to thank for the Cellulosic

and Functional Materials (CFM) Laboratory as their

supports in providing the equipment for conducting

this study.

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1.108

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