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In this paper, a generalised micro-mechanical model capable of capturing the mechanical behaviour of polysaccharidic aerogels, in particular cellulose aerogels, is proposed. To this end, first the mechanical structure and properties of these highly nanoporous cellulose aerogels prepared from aqueous salt hydrate melts (calcium thiocyanate, Ca(SCN)2·6H2O and zinc chloride, ZnCl2·4H2O) are studied. The cellulose content within these aerogels is found to have a direct relation to the microstructural quantities such as the fibril length and diameter. This, along with porosity, appears to influence the resulting mechanical properties. Furthermore, experimental characterisation of cellulose aerogels was done using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), pore-size data analysis, and compression tests. Cellulose aerogels are of a characteristic cellular microstructures and accordingly a network formed by square shaped cells is considered in the micro-mechanical model proposed in this paper. This model is based on the non-linear bending and collapse of such cells of varying pore sizes. The extended Euler-Bernoulli beam theory for large deflections is used to describe the bending in the cell walls. The proposed model is physically motivated and demonstrates a good agreement with our experimental data of both ZnCl2 and Ca(SCN)2 based cellulose aerogels with different cellulose contents.

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In this study, removal of phosphate from waste aqueous solutions was examined in a batch wise system using low cost waste materials. The effects of adsorbent dosage and phosphate concentration on the phosphate removal have been studied bu using eggshells and pumice due to high removal of phosphate. The experimental data were applied to the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models for determination of adsorption of phosphate mechanism onto waste eggshells and pumice. The results indicate that both models fitted very well the experimental data. According to the Langmuir isotherm studies, the maximum sorption capacity (qmax) of the waste eggshell and pumice were evaluated as 19.23 mg/g (R 2 =0.943) and 32.26 mg/g (R 2 =0.894). The heterogeneity factor (1/n) of the Freundlich isotherm model was calculated as 0.245 for the waste eggshells, 0.383 for the pumice, respectively.