No abstract

Silica nanostructured spheres were obtained by spray drying of silica sol prepared in situ. Their morphologies were significantly affected by the aggregation of the primary particles in the sol. They had the mode of the pore sizes which was about the same order as Laser Particle Size Analyzer (LPA) diameter. Increasing the mixing ratio of the larger particles (20 nm) to smaller ones (7 nm) decreased the Brunauer, Emmett and Teller (BET) specific surface area, as expected. Pore volume decreased with the pore size distribution broadened and the mean pore diameter was not affected by the increase, due to the decrease in aggregation of the primary particles. Either the increase in the drying temperature and use of ethanol as a cosolvent made the agglomerates hollower, the larger of which with thinner shell transformed to doughnut type agglomerates, due to the structural and hydrodynamic instabilities.

No abstract

Super absorbent polymer (SAP) sorbs copious amount of liquid water but its sorption power for water vapor is quite low. On the other hand, mesoporous silica loaded with CaCl 2 (MPS-CC) has high sorption capacity for water vapor. However, this is determined by the salt loading, which is limited due to its corrosiveness. Even by simple powder blending of 75 mass% of SAP and the balance of MPS-CC (SAP75/MPS-CC25), the 3-hour maximum specific water uptake (g H 2 O/g sorbent) reached the maximum, 3 times the equilibrium uptake of MPS-CC. The sorption property was further enhanced by developing a new sorbent in which mesoporous silica was grown on the surface of swelling SAP and then impregnated by CC in ethanol. In the new sorbent (SAP-iMPS-CC), MPS grew organized, straight and lengthwise by the help of SAP. Owing to such intimate contact between MPS and SAP, the 3-hour specific water uptake of the new sorbents grown for more than 24 h (SAP-iMPS-CC24) was kept constant at the value of 2 times that of SAP75/MPS25. The SAP mass% of SAP-iMPS-144 could reach 25 without the sacrifice of sorption capacity.All the materials used were reagent grade. Tetraethoxyorthosilicate (TEOS), hydrochloric acid, ethanol (95 %) calcium chloride (CaCl·6H 2 O, 98 %) were purchased from Samchun Chemicals. Pluronic P123 †