Thermal behavior and structure stability analysis of Indonesian natural zeolite

The Indonesia natural zeolite occurred naturally as microporous material. Activated zeolite was prepared from natural zeolite by stirring using aquadest for some hours and drying naturally before heated in oven for different kind of temperature. It will be next applied as adsorbent for cooling application. It was modified using some of different kind of drying temperature to achieve the properties characteristic such as Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) Surface Area, Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) to measure the weight loss or gain as a function of temperature, and SEM with EDAX to have information on the chemical composition of the sample. The BET result show the different surface area and the TGA results show that drying temperature between 100°C until 120°C could remove water from the natural zeolite, while in higher drying temperature until 200 °C still suitable for this natural zeolite but the water move very fast whether the good zeolite for adsorbent consist of 10% of water and should remove completely reversible. However, the Si/Al ratio is increased from 3.62, 3.78, and 4.94 for different kind of drying temperature, respectively. The use of natural zeolite which is widely available in Indonesia as an alternative silica gel will obtain a new promising adsorbent for applications in the cooling field by using solar energy as the main source, which based on the literature studies that have been conducted, Indonesian natural zeolite has rarely been studied to be applied to the adsorption process for cooling.