| dc.description.abstract | Batteries and capacitors are promising candidates for a greener future in energy storage. These technologies are highly dependant on the advanced materials used. Resorcinol-formaldehyde resin coated silica has proved to be a valuable precursor for producing silicon-carbon composites for anode materials. However, today the synthesis of this material is expensive and not very environmentally friendly. This study investigates how the process can be made more economical and leave a reduced environmental impact. This is done by looking at surfactant (CTAB) concentration, ethanol concentration, temperature impact and the possibility of recovering solvent by using simple distillation. The reaction was recorded and samples were investigated with TEM. CTAB concentration was varied and results suggest that a CTAB:SiO2 ratio of 1 could be sufficient to treat the silica surface. The ethanol concentration was varied and the rheology of the sample fluid changed. By using only 10% ethanol in the solvent mixture, the reaction solution became shear-thinning indicating a polymeric solution. For the remaining samples, viscosity decreased as ethanol concentration decreased. The ethanol concentration limit was found to not be lower than 20%. The reaction would occur faster at higher temperatures, and energy consumption estimations at lab scale suggest that a reaction temperature of 70°C would be favorable because of the short reaction time. Drop feeders for the reactants were tested in order to automate the process. The product from these experiments yielded poor results. Distillation of ethanol from the waste solution proved to be viable and the highest recovery achieved was 90%. | |