The effect of mesoporous structure of different mesoporous silica prepared from rice husk with potential application in contaminants removals

EIMER GRISELDA A.; BENZAQUÉN, TAMARA B.; CARRARO PAOLA M.

La Serena

Congreso; tercer Congreso en Energía, Eficiencia y Sustentabilidad Ambiental (CEES 2021); 2021

During recent years, a persistent interest of researchers has been in the possibility of developingnew, safe, non-toxic, and environmentally sustainable materials using waste and moreenvironmentally friendly processes. Recently, a large part of the research has been focused onthe efficient use of biomass to produce engineering materials and value-added products. The cropresidues represent one of the largest biomass resources globally. Among them, rice husk (RH) isan abundant and sustainable waste biomass available in the world. These wastes often arediscarded or burn for energy recovery, producing rice husk ash, causing great environmentalproblems for disposal. Thus, rice husk ash (RHA) presents over 80 wt.% of silica. This makespossible to use RH as an alternative cheap source of amorphous silica for the production ofsilicon-based materials. The most common types of silica materials in the mesoporous pore sizerange are MCM-41 and SBA-15, with hexagonal pore structure, which have been applied assupports for various catalytic active species due to their high specific areas and pore volumes.The main objective of the present work was synthesizing siliceous mesoporous materials (MCM-41 and SBA-15) using a commercial organic silica and a natural, non-toxic, and cheap source ofsilica. This last synthesis methodology is effective, simple, and more environmentally friendly.The pure silica supports were modified with different loadings of Fe and a multi-techniquecharacterization was employed. The chemical and physic properties of mesoporous solidssynthesized from rice husk were similar to those of supports synthesized from commercial silicaby conventional method.