Acid Chemical Treatment for Creating Nano-Silica for Construction Applications

Rice wastes are rich of silica content. It is subjected to an acid chemical treatment, followed by the sol-gel process, and then it is burned in an electric muffle furnace at a temperature of 600 degrees Celsius. This produced silica nanoparticles. The inorganic contaminants in the rice husk ash were purified by leaching them with Hydrochloric acid, boiling them between 80 and 85 degrees Celsius, and then washing them till the PH value reached the neutral limit of 7. The methods involved in preparing the nano-silica (NS) samples were carried out in somewhat different ways for each of the three samples. X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used in order to evaluate each specimen in terms of its level of purity and the size of its individual particles. In addition, the three samples were added to concrete mix at 2% of the total binder content as an addition. The compressive strengths of these concretes were then assessed at 7 and 28 days of age and compared with the compressive strengths of normal and silica fume concretes. In addition, the performance of an NS sample with greater purity, smaller particle size, and better responsiveness in concrete was compared to that of commercial NS. It was discovered that the NS can be made at a price and with qualities comparable to those of commercially available NS, which were deemed to be fair. Additionally, the influence of locally manufactured NS on the strength of the concrete was shown to be more evident than the effect of commercially produced NS.