Sustainable Material Production from Agricultural Wastes: Bio-nano Carbon

Year 2024, Volume: 8 Issue: 2, 183 - 191

Furkan Baş , Burak Hakan Aksoy

Abstract

Agricultural activities play a key role in the production and supply of the food needed to sustain life. In recent years, agricultural activities have accelerated to meet the food demands of a rapidly growing world population. However, intensive agricultural activities generate a significant amount of waste and by-products. These wastes are mostly composed of organic materials, and if not properly stored, disposed of, or managed, they cause soil-water-air pollution and threaten the environment and public health. Therefore, the recycling of agricultural wastes is of great environmental and economic importance. In addition, recycling agricultural wastes and transforming them into high value-added products by subjecting them to various resource recovery processes contributes to the concept of sustainability and circular economy and provides access to raw materials from local resources in a cheap and easily accessible manner. In this context, in this study, apple and its by-products, which are among the wastes of agriculture and food processing industry, were collected from the apple orchards and apple juice production plant of a company operating in the local region and bio-nano materials were produced from these wastes in a sustainable manner. In the study, the wastes were carbonized using hydro-thermal synthesis method and then reduced to nano size by grinding. FESEM, EDX and XRD analyses were carried out on the carbons produced in the study. The results of the study showed that bio-nano materials can be sustainably produced from agricultural wastes.

Keywords

Agricultural waste, bio-nano material, hydro-thermal synthesis, Resource recovery, sustainability

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