Sol-gel-derived hydrophobic silica aerogels for oil cleanup: Effect of silylation

The present work reports the influence of the silylating agent on the physicochemical parameters of sol-gel derived hydro-phobic silica-aerogels fabricated under ambient conditions and their application in oil clean-up application. Nontoxic and low-cost material such as water-glass solution was used as a precursor to synthesize silica aerogel samples under ambient pressure drying. The surface modifications in the prepared wet-gels were carried out with different percentages of trimethylchlorosilane (TMCS). Further, an ambient pressure drying process was employed for drying the wet-gels. The influence of surface modifying agent TMCS content in hexane used before drying of silica-aerogel was evaluated from different properties such as density, amorphous structure, FT-IR spectroscopy, thermal stability, contact angle measurements and microstructure properties such as specific-surface area, pore-size and pore-volume to optimize the performance of the aerogels. The influence of TMCS content on adsorption properties of silica-aerogels for oil clean-up application was investigated. The results obtained show that TMCS can be used as an effective agent to transform the surface of silica-aerogels for oil clean-up applications. (Figure presented.)