Synthesis and Modeling of Silver and Titanium dioxide Nanoparticles by Population Balance Equations

This thesis reports detailed synthesis of silver nanoparticles produced from the reduction of silver nitrate by stabilizing and reducing agents. Silver nanoparticles have a strong tendency to agglomerate. This reduces the surface to volume ratio and hence the resultant is the catalytic effect. Silver nanoparticles are produced in the batch reactor at a different shear rate and are investigated experimentally. Finally, the colloidal solution of capped silver nanoparticles is free from agglomeration for several months.

This work also investigates the effect of the surface stabilization with varied surfactants on the Titanium dioxide particles. The precipitation of nanoparticles in the batch reactor is investigated experimentally at different shear rates as well as by numerical simulations based on the population balance equations. The population balance model in this work is numerically solved by cell average technique. The experimental results are compared with the simulation using different agglomeration and disintegration kernels. It is found that the experimental results of the particle size distributions at different shear rates of TiO2 are in good agreement with the simulation results.