Abstract—Biocompatible silica aerogel microparticles are promising drug delivery vehicles because of their large surface area and open pore structures. A simple process has been developed in this work to prepare silica aerogel microparticles from rice husk ash, using water-in-mineral oil emulsion for sol-gel, followed by aging in ethanol to strengthen gel network and drying with scCO
2. This process obviates drawback of current methods for silica aerogels. The effects of speed of agitation of water-oil mixture, sol-to-oil ratio and surfactant concentration have been investigated on particle size and size distribution, BET surface area, cumulative pore volume and pore diameter. A surface area of 654 m
2/g, higher than the values reported for similar materials, could be obtained.
Index Terms—Rice husk ash, silica aerogel microparticles, supercritical carbon dioxide, water-in-oil emulsion.
The authors are with Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai 400076, India ( e - mail: sureshrs02@gmail.com, madhu@ iitb.ac.in, mm@iitb.ac.in).
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Cite:R. S. Kumar, M. Vinjamur, and M. Mukhopadhyay, "A Simple Process to Prepare Silica Aerogel Microparticles from Rice Husk Ash," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 4, no. 5, pp. 321-325, 2013.
