About Aerogel:
- Aerogels are among the lightest solid materials.
- They are created by combining a polymer with a solvent to form a gel, and then removing the liquid from the gel and replacing it with air.
- Properties: They are extremely porous and very low in density and they offer advantages like adjustable surface chemistry
- They are also known as ‘solid air’ or ‘frozen smoke’ are excellent adsorbents (a solid substance used to remove contaminants) and are incredibly lightweight solids composed mostly of air.
- Aerogels are most preferred in environment and oil spill clean up, for insulation purposes
Key facts about the newly developed Hybrid Aerogel
- Researchers have designed and synthesised aerogel: the sponge-like absorbents, light in weight and porous synthetic materials for this purpose.
- The aerogel’s unique structural composition was treated with iron nitrate salts and maintained at room temperature for about two to five minutes.
- This specially designed aerogel was found to be effective in extracting and retrieving upto 99 per cent of gold ions from the e-waste.
- In daylight, the hybrid aerogel could extract 1689mg/gram of e-waste and 2349mg / gram under blue light.
- As there were dual processes involved, that of adsorption and reduction — the quality of the recovered gold was reasonably pure thereby reducing the need for further purifying processes.
Q1: What is Porosity?
The porosity or void fraction is a measurement of the void or empty spaces of a material and is defined as the ratio between the volume of voids and the total volume.
News: IISER Pune team develops hybrid aerogel to extract gold from e-waste
Last updated on June, 2025
→ UPSC Notification 2025 was released on 22nd January 2025.
→ UPSC Prelims Result 2025 is out now for the CSE held on 25 May 2025.
→ UPSC Prelims Question Paper 2025 and Unofficial Prelims Answer Key 2025 are available now.
→ UPSC Calendar 2026 is released on 15th May, 2025.
→ The UPSC Vacancy 2025 were released 1129, out of which 979 were for UPSC CSE and remaining 150 are for UPSC IFoS.
→ UPSC Mains 2025 will be conducted on 22nd August 2025.
→ UPSC Prelims 2026 will be conducted on 24th May, 2026 & UPSC Mains 2026 will be conducted on 21st August 2026.
→ The UPSC Selection Process is of 3 stages-Prelims, Mains and Interview.
→ UPSC Result 2024 is released with latest UPSC Marksheet 2024. Check Now!
→ UPSC Toppers List 2024 is released now. Shakti Dubey is UPSC AIR 1 2024 Topper.
→ Also check Best IAS Coaching in Delhi