Effect of Heat Treatment Temperature and Time on Preparation of Porous Walled Hollow Glass Microspheres (PWHGMs)

Abstract

The development of hollow glass microspheres (HGMs) with porous walls provides a unique system in which filling agents can be incorporated into the porous walled hollow glass microspheres (PWHGMs). Applications of these have been increased due to the many proposed uses for such a material. They are widely used in various fields of science and technology because of their unique properties, such as catalyst supports, photo catalysts, sorbents, gas sensors, molecular sieves, drug and bioactive delivery systems as well as chemical and biological indicators, etc. PWHGMs with their interior hollow volume and porous walls offer greater storage capacity and pathways for retaining and releasing of stored material. PWHGMs as additives can be used to increase porosity in the electrodes for more electrolyte storage in lead acid batteries and enhance the energy performance of the battery. Further, PWHGMs have potential applications in sensor materials, fuel cells, solar cell, chromatograph column fillers and as micro reactors to encapsulate Pd for catalytic hydrodechlorination of chlorophenols in water. In this research, efforts have been made to prepare PWHGMs from readily available borosilicate glass frits in the laboratory using flame spheroidisation method. The effect of heat treatment temperature and time on preparation of porous walled hollow glass microspheres was investigated. Hollow glass microspheres with wall thickness of 0.5–2 μm were fabricated from borosilicate glass frits in air-acetylene flame. The prepared microspheres were heat-treated and acid leached to produce porous walled hollow glass microspheres. According to results, suggest that heat treatment times used in this research are not as effective as the heat treatment temperatures in changing the porosity (or phase separation) in HGMs and the resulting PWHGMs.