Effect of catalyst on the synthesis of SiC from rice husk

Abstract

Rice husk is one of the huge amounts of material among them those having no such great use rather creating lots of problem, 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. Now days, agricultural waste material are getting a wide exposure to the future generation of material science world. The present study establishes that silicon-based ceramic materials have been prepared from the pyrolysis and heat treatments of rice husks in a N2 atmosphere. Different Si/C/ N/O based ceramics (SiC, Si3N4, Si2 N2O and SiO2) have been produced by heat treatments. The chemical compositions as well as the structure and morphology of these materials were found to be dependent on the temperature and concentration of the Fe introduced before the heat treatment. SEM analysis shows how the morphology of the product changes with change in temperature as well as with the concentration of Fe. Maximum whiskers
formation can be observed from the sample of various concentration of Fe treated at 1400°C. At 1450°C, the amount of whiskers is gradually changed to globules. In the present work, an attempt has been made to synthesize the silicon carbide from rice husk and the effect of Fe catalyst have been studied under the inert atmosphere and this treatment
of rice husk will act as a ‘resource’ for energy production and simultaneously avoids its disposal problems. Again it has been found that this route is much more beneficial as compared to other conventional methods of preparation. Since SiC is an important ceramic material by the help of which we can do much more application in future. I have given here much more attention to make the best use of waste materials. Not only by doing so it eliminate the environmental
pollution problem but also the best use of waste material can happen. So our society can take the real advantage of modern science and technology.