OBTAINING AND CHARACTERIZATION OF SUBPRODUCTS FROM RICE HUSK

LEANDRO LUDUEÑA; DIANA FASCE; VERA ALVAREZ; PABLO STEFANI

Los Cocos, Córdoba, Argentina

Simposio; Archipol ´09; 2009

Rice husk (RH) is a by-product of rice milling process, and a great resource as a raw biomass material with high potential for manufacturing value-added products. The world rice production for 2006/07 was 418 million tons (FAO). As a consequence, approximately 80 million tons of husk residues were produced. In Asia and South America most of the rice husk is used as bedding material for animals (Park et al. 2000) or is burned for energy generation while the industrial applications of this material are still limited. Thus, most of rice husk is disposed off as waste in landfills, causing environmental and health issues problems.  It is necessary, then, to consider the use of this waste for producing value-added products with a clear positive effect to the environment. The main components of rice husk are cellulose 32.7%, hemicelluloses 20.5%, lignin 21.8%, silica 15.1%, solubles 2.8% and moisture 7.5% (Stefani et al. 2005). The composition of rice husk shows that it is possible to obtain very interesting materials by combining adequately chemical and thermal treatments on this residue. In the last years many studies had been focused on the production of amorphous silica which are normally used as additive for concrete due to its pozzolanic activity (Ganesan et al. 2008), as well as reinforcing agent for polymeric matrix (Stefani et al. 2006). On the other hand the cellulosic fraction can also be used as reinforcement of several polymeric matrices. One of the main drawbacks by using cellulose fraction as reinforcing agent of thermoplastics is to reach an adequate dispersion and adhesion with the matrix (Alvarez et al. 2006; 2007; 2008) being very important to select an appropriate modification route of waste. In this work several treatments were used in produce rice husk sub products with added value were obtained by separating inorganic and lignocellulosic components of rice husk. Different techniques (mainly FTIR, TGA and SEM) were employed in order to determine the effect of each treatment on the chemical structure and morphology of original rice husk.