Preparation and characterization of a porous material from an Algerian desert sand

The objective of the present work is to prepare and characterize a porous material using quite particular and localized dunar sand (erg) of the desert near the El-Oued (south-east of Algeria). The porous material is prepared according to the mechanism of co-operative self-assembly. The method consists of polymerizing a silicic precursor (sodium silicate obtained by alkali fusion of sand with the sodium carbonate) around micelles of surfactant in an acid aqueous solution according to the sol-gel process. The elimination of the surfactant by calcining at high temperature leads to the final material which was characterized by XRF, XRD, MEB-EDX, FTIR and BET techniques.