This was our second meeting with Dr. Zaki to discuss FYP topics. My given FYP topic is “Effect of NaOH concentration during pretreatment on thermal processing for the production of CNT from charcoal.” He explained the experimental procedures step by step to us, so we now have an idea of how to carry out the experiment.

On 29 October:

I soaked the charcoal in 1L of HCl for 16 hours on Wednesday at 4 pm. On the same day, Madam Julia taught us how to prepare a 1L HCl solution.

On 30 October:

After soaking the charcoal in the HCl solution for 16 hours, I filtered it around 8 am using the filter pump. Then, I washed the charcoal with distilled and filtered until the pH reached around 5-6. At 4 pm, I soaked the charcoal again in NaOH solution for 16 hours.

On 31 Oct,

I filtered the charcoal again after 16hours. It longer time to filter the charcoal that soaked in the NaOH solution compared to the HCl solution. After that, I used distilled water to wash the charcoal and filtered it again. Then, I sealed the charcoal in zip lock bag.

On the same day, I proceeded to make another sample. I soaked the charcoal in HCl solution for 16 hours. I repeated the same processes from previous week.

On the same day, after filtering the charcoal with HCl solutions, I soaked the charcoal in 0.5M NaOH solution.

This week, I learned that, during filtering charcoal in NaOH solutions, I should filter the charcoal residue at the bottom first to save more time because previous week I took a longer time to filter the charcoal in NaOH solution.

After leaving the charcoal overnight, I weighed it and recorded its weight. I then placed the charcoal in a crucible and put the crucible into the furnace at 350 °C for 2 hours. After heating, I allowed the charcoal to cool inside the furnace before removing it. Once cooled, I weighed the charcoal again. This procedure was carried out on Friday, 21 November 2025.

For the preparation, 0.1 g of charcoal was mixed with 100 ml of distilled water. The mixture was put tube place inside centrifuge at 3000 rpm for 5 minutes to ensure proper dispersion of the sample before UV‑VIS analysis.

First, the charcoal was soaked with 1.0M HCl for 16 hours. After that, the charcoal was filtered and rinsed with distilled water. The next step is, charcoal was soaked with 1.0M NaOH for 16 hours. After 16 hours, the charcoal was filtered and also rinsed with distilled water. After pretreatment, the charcoal was dried and placed in furnace for thermal processing.

The size of the particles can only be observed through the microscope after pretreatment, drying, and thermal processing. However, the detailed structures such as single‑walled or multi‑walled CNTs cannot be seen with this instrument, as they require higher equipment like a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM).