Synthesis of carbon encapsulated SiO2 nanoparticles from rice husk and its application in solar to steam conversion

Abstract

Steam is important in many technological applications including sterilization of medical devices, cleaning, and power generating. In general, steam can be produced by boiling water at high temperature. In new technology, solar can convert water directly into steam even at low temperature by using nanoparticles. In this research we study solar to steam conversion of carbon encapsulated SiO2 nanoparticles (SiO2@C) synthesized from rice husk. SiO2 nanoparticles were synthesized using alkali extraction and sol-gel methods. While synthesis of carbon encapsulated SiO2 nanoparticles was done by sonochemical method with glucose as source of carbon. The samples have been characterized by XRF, SEM-EDX, and XRD. The effectivity of solar steam conversion performed by measuring time dependent of temperature and pressure. XRF and XRD results shown that SiO2 nanoparticles have purity of 97.2% inn amorphous phase. Carbon encapsulated SiO2 nanoparticles (SiO2@C) have successfully synthesized indicating by NaOH base test. The morphology of SiO2@C is agglomerated with average particle size around 20nm. The measurement of solar to steam conversion showed that increasing carbon concentration of SiO2@C rises steam production with indicated by increasing temperature and pressure of steam.