An Overview of Current and Prognostic Trends on Synthesis, Characterization, and Applications of Biobased Silica

Abstract

Silica has shown numerous applications in different fields such as environmental, biomedical, agriculture, and even in chemical processing. However, due to high energy-intensive and cost-effective issues, researchers show interest to replace the conventional methods with biobased environmentally-friendly techniques for biosilica production from renewable biomass sources. Generally, silica is found to be available in amorphous and crystalline structures. For commercial purposes, silica is produced from alkyl orthosilicates ore that consists of polyethlydiorthosilicate, tetraethyl ortothosilicate, and tetramethyl orthosilicate. Another form of silica, silica gel, is produced from the selected resources of biomass, such as palm tree, wheat straw, maize leaves, teff straw, sugarcane bagasse, rice husk, rice straw, sugarcane leaf, oat husk, bamboo leaf, and corn cob. The production of biobased silica gel from agricultural residues is found to be a sustainable which receives a significant attention that can be replaced with inorganic-based silica gel for environmental concerns. Based on this context, there is a huge look for developing a process to produce biobased silica and silica gel from biomass resources with low energy utilization as promising alternatives to conventional methods. Keeping in view, current trends and methods for synthesis, the characterization of biobased silica and silica gel, as well as its wide prognostic applications were focused on a comprehensive review.