Abstract
Nowadays, silica gels have developed a lot of interest due to their extraordinary properties and their existing and potential applications in science and technology. Silica gel has a lot of applications such as a desiccant, as a preservation tool to control humidity, as an adsorbent, as a catalyst and as a catalyst support. Silica gel is a rigid three-dimensional network of colloidal silica, and is classified as: aquagel, xerogel and aero-gel. Extraction of amorphous silica from Maize Husk Ash (MHA) was carried out in this study. Silica xerogel was produced by dissolving MHA with alkali solution to form sodium silicate solution and lowering the pH to7 by adding hydrochloric acid to form silica aquagel followed by drying to form silica xerogel. The silica xerogel was characterized using SEM, XRD and FTIR techniques. Silica and mineral contents of MHA and xerogel were determined by EDS, X-ray diffraction patterns revealed amorphous nature of extracted silica. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) data indicates the presence of siloxane and silanol groups. Silica yield from MHA was 56.32% while moisture content was 2.89% and also the SEM presented appropriated morphological characteristics of the best silica. MHA proved to be a potential low cost raw material for the production of silica gel. Keywords: Maize husk ash, amorphous silica, xerogel, surface properties DOI: 10.7176/CMR/13-3-01 Publication date: October 31 st 2021
Highlights
Amorphous Silica has been extracted from different agricultural biomass like rice husk, sugar cane Bagasse, coffee husk, and wheat husk and corn cob
The broad X-ray diffraction pattern shows that the bio silica is predominantly amorphous
Fig[1].X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectrum for Maize Husk Ash (MHA) a) 4000C b) 5000C c) 6000C d) 7000C In general, it has been reported that diffraction broad peak at 2θ = 220 degree indicates amorphous silica along with some of the other impurities peaks are presented
Summary
Amorphous Silica has been extracted from different agricultural biomass like rice husk, sugar cane Bagasse, coffee husk, and wheat husk and corn cob. Aerogels are a diverse class of porous, solid materials composed of a network of interconnected mono structures that exhibit porosity up to 95-99%, high surface area and low density. These unique properties of aerogels attracted many researchers to explore them as drug delivery vehicles (5). Mohanraj et al (2012) prepared and characterized nano SiO2 from corn cob ash by precipitation method. Using the sol-gel technique has a benefit of producing valuable silica particles at lower cost The objective of this present work is to extract silica from corn cob by sol-gel method and nanostructured the extracted silica without template material. The ash extracted silica was characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Scanning Electron Microscopy/Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDX) and thermo gravimetric analysis (TG/DTA)
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