The bagasse (raw material) used came from a sugar and alcohol factory in the
State of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). It was washed in the laboratory with distilled water
and dried at 45 C in a ventilated oven to remove impurities. Subsequently, the
bagasse samples were burnt in an aired electric oven with a 10 C/min heating rate,
first at 350 C for 3 h, and then at different temperatures ranging from 400 to
800 C, at increments of 100 C, for another 3 h. The ashes are designated as
SCBA-T, where T is the maximum temperature. The ratio of sample to internal
chamber volumes was maintained at 0.036 for all burning processes. The burning
was performed in two steps in accordance with the efficient results obtained by
Sugita [10] with RHA.
After calcination and cooling inside the oven, the samples were subjected to dry
grinding using a planetary mill (Restch PM-4) with alumina jar operating with
300 rpm and 25% filling of alumina spheres as grinding media. Particle sizes were
measured using a laser diffraction analyzer (Mastersizer 2000, Malvern Instruments)
and the loss on ignition (LOI) was determined by heating the sample up
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