Study on silicon carbide produced From rice husk as a reinforcing agent

Abstract

Now days, agricultural waste material are getting a wide exposure to the future generation of material science world. Rice husk is one of them, and its global production is approximately 140 million tons, annually. In the majority of cases much of the husk produced from the processing of rice is either burnt or dumped as a waste.
In the present work, an attempt has been made to synthesize the silicon carbide from rice husk and consolidate the prepared silicon carbide with aluminum matrix and form a composite by powder metallurgy route, this treatment of rice husk will act as a ‘resource’ for energy production and simultaneously avoids its disposal problems. Following the powder synthesis and consolidation with aluminum powder and sintering done at temperature of 5500 C with holding
time of 1 hr., extensive efforts have been undertaken for characterization by X-ray diffraction,SEM and EDX, microstructural evolution by optical microscopy and other analysis as well as assessment of mechanical properties like hardness under different loading conditions and wear
behavior variables like time, wear depth and sliding distance. The results suggest that preparation of metal matrix composites of Al-SiC followed by conventional sintering method is a potential way for synthesizing new high strength commercial MMCs by utilization of biomass resources.