Rice husk derived Aminated Silica for the efficient adsorption of different gases

In this present work, we successfully prepared aminated silica (ASiO(2)) from rice husk ash (RHA) and functionalized with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES). Physical and chemical properties of the synthesized material were investigated by various techniques SEM–EDX, XPS, FTIR, TGA. The surface area of RHA was 223 m(2)/g, while for ASiO(2) was 101 m(2)/g. Molecular level DFT calculations revealed that the functionalization of ASiO(2) resulted in a significant decrease in the HOMO–LUMO energy gap, a reduction in hardness, and a consequent increase in charge transfer characteristics. The adsorption behavior at low pressure (1 atm.) of aminated silica on different gases CO(2), CH(4), H(2), and N(2) at temperatures 77, 273, 298 K was studied. The adsorption of hydrogen was reported for the first time on aminated silica with an excellent adsorption capacity of 1.2 mmol/g. The ASiO(2) exhibited excellent performance in terms of gas separation in binary mixtures of CO(2)/CH(4), CO(2)/N(2) and CO(2)/H(2) at 273, and 298 K, respectively. The catalyst further exhibits high stability during three cycles with less than 10% variation in the separation capacity.