Wet preparation of ‘water glass’ from the hull ash of Egyptian rice

Abstract

THE FAO and other organisations have suggested useful applications for the rice hull in agriculture¹. But promotion of the use of the material for industrial applications was ignored. The use of the hull and its ash in the preparation of furfural and ceramic products has now been shown to be possible¹, but only the preparation of furfural from the hull has been established (in the USA and Italy) as a sound industrial process. Nevertheless, the furfural industry consumes only a small fraction of the material available, and research into other potential applications is obviously desirable. The work described here is an attempt at the wet preparation of water glass by decomposing the hull ash with sodium hydroxide solution at a moderately high temperature.