Development of Novel Super Absorbent Polymer Using Banana Pseudo Stem Waste to Increase Water Retention Capacity of Agricultural Soils
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Date
2020
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Uva Wellassa University of Sri Lanka
Abstract
Water scarcity of agricultural fields for irrigation is a huge problem in many parts of Sri
Lanka especially in dry zone where it covers 70% of the agriculture production. The
objective of this study is to prepare a novel environmentally friendly Super Absorbent
Polymer (SAP) using cellulose that extracted from banana pseudostem fibers and study
the water retention capacity of SAP amended agricultural soil (AS). Cellulose was
extracted from banana pseudo stem fibers by alkaline pretreatment and cross-linked with
3.75% w/w citric acid in the presence of water. Cellulose and prepared SAP was
confirmed using Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-Ray Diffraction
(XRD) measurements. The water retention capacity of SAP was investigated with
distilled water (DW) and tap water (TW). The water retention ability was examined by
soil without SAP and amending SAP concentrations of 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, and 1% w/w for
depths of 0-10, 10-20, and 20-30 cm. Soils with dry bulk densities of 1.78, 1.69, and 1.76
g cm-3
in the dry zone and 1.12, 1.34, and 1.35 g cm-3
in the intermediate zone were used
to the SAP amendment. The absorption peak at 1724 cm-1 was attributed to ester linkage
due to anhydride formation and Full Width at Half Maximum values in XRD patterns for
both cellulose and SAP were decreased from 3.020 to 2.950 with increased the
crystallinity which confirm the cross-linking of SAP. FTIR and XRD results showed that
the banana pseudo stem is a source for cellulose extraction. The maximum water retention
capacity of SAP was 67.4 g/g for DW and 57.4 g/g for TW. SAP amended soils showed a
significant increase in overall water retention than AS without SAP. The evaporation test
showed that 0.75% is the best SAP concentration for water retention in all selected AS. It
is needed to test water retention capacity for wet zone AS to get an overall idea about the
effect of prepared SAP as the dry and intermediate zone AS showed the significant
increase in water retention with the SAP amendment.
Keywords: Super Absorbent Polymer (SAP), Banana Pseudo Stem, Cross-linking,
Evaporation Test, Agricultural Soils (AS)
Description
Keywords
Materials Sciences, Mineral Sciences, Soil Science, Water Management System