Helping the Environment

CQuest and its partners are working hard to ensure that the production of sodium silicate has minimal effects to your health and the earth's environment.

Environmental Benefits

Sodium silicate liquid made from rice hull ash (RHA) is a major gain for the environment. For years, the rice industry has searched for ways to utilize the rice hull byproduct. As an energy source, burning the hulls displaced more expensive, fossil fuel alternatives. However, the development of a process to extract the valuable silica content for use as the primary feedstock for CQuest's sodium silicate liquid was a major breakthrough. Not only did this new use reduce land fill disposal volumes but also represented a major improvement over current methods of producing sodium silicate. Conventional manufacturing processes involve roasting sand in gas fired open hearth furnaces at temperatures exceeding 2000 °F. During this process, soda ash is introduced, resulting in large releases of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. Compared to CQuest's rice hull-delivered sodium silicate liquid, conventional processes result in much greater usage of increasingly scarce energy resources but also results in a much greater carbon footprint.