Extraction of silica from fly-ash and fabrication of silica-clay composite for dye removal and kinetic studies

A facile and green approach to extract silica from the coal fly-ash waste is extremely critical for environmental sustainability and economically suitable. In this study, we have used acid-alkali coupled approach to improvised the proficiency of the extraction process. The sodium hydroxide (NaOH) soaking results the formation of the sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) solution then pure silica was obtained by heating at high temperature; this coupled route-way results better yield of silica (SiO2) which is similar to 40 g. The efficiency of pure silica is not enough to remove toxic effluents from the aqueous media. A highly versatile approach of composite formation was adopted to fabricate silica-clay composite using kaolinite-clay and extracted silica. Both materials, extracted silica and its silica-clay composite were analyzed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) method, X-ray diffraction technique (XRD) and Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy (FTIR). The silica-clay composite showed plate-tubular like morphology with enormous binding sites available for the sorption pollutants like organic dyes. It has shown excellent sorption of methylene blue (MB) efficiency of 131.5 mg/g, while silica furnished the sorption of 70.5 mg/g. Results revealed that the synthesized material could probably have better potential for dye removal from industrial effluents.

Automated summary

A facile and green approach was used to extract silica from coal fly-ash waste, which is of great importance for environmental sustainability and economic suitability. The acid-alkali coupled approach was employed to improve the efficiency of the extraction process. The synthesized silica-clay composite demonstrated excellent sorption efficiency for methylene blue, indicating its potential for dye removal from industrial effluents.