Silicon tetrachloride, used in industry for the production of highest purity silicon and silica, is customarily manufactured from silica-sand and charcoal.SiCl4 can also be made from rice hulls, which contain up to 20 percent silica and only traces of other mineral matter. Hulls, after carbonization, actually prove superior as a starting material since they react at lower temperature. This use of rice hulls may offer a new, profitable solution for a rice mill byproduct disposal problem.In studies of the reaction kinetics with carbonized hulls, conversion of SiO2 to SiCl4 was found to proceed within a few minutes to a constant, limited yield which depended reproducibly on the ambient temperature of the reactor. See Fig. 1. This suggested that physical or chemical heterogeneity of the silica in the hull structure might be involved.
The X-discontinuity as a Tracer for Chemical Heterogeneity: Observations from East Africa
