What’s the Difference Between Liquid Silica Gel and Solid Silica Gel?

Appearance

Liquid silica gel is liquid and has fluidity; solid silica gel is solid and has no fluidity.

Field of Use

Liquid silicone is generally used in producing silicone baby products, silicone kitchen products and silicone medical products. It can directly contact food and human body.

Solid silica gel is generally used in making daily necessities, industrial miscellaneous parts, and auto parts.

Liquid silicone is a food-grade material which is highly transparent and safe. It does not add auxiliary materials such as vulcanizing agent during molding. Solid silica gel is transparent. It needs vulcanizing agent during molding to speed up the vulcanization molding time.

Moulding Method

The full name of liquid silicone is injection molded liquid silicone rubber (LSR) and it is moulded by an injection molding machine. The injection molding machine has a very simple working princple, high accuracy, high output and is both labor saving, power saving, and material saving. It has been widely used in the silicone product industry.

Solid silicone molding is originally a lump. After being mixed by a mixer, the cutting machine cuts it into the appropriate size and thickness, then puts it into the mold, and the molding machine presses it under a certain temperature. The demolding process is similar to that of plastic products, and the mold needs to be cleaned before next use.

Finished Product

Products made of iquid silicone has high transparency, no peculiar smell, and a glue injection port.

The products made of solid silicone has a transparent bottom, and smell like vulcanizing agent and the products have no glue injection port.

Moulding

In industry, solid silica gel is made of water glass (sodium silicate), which is hydrolyzed in an acidic medium to form a gel, and then is made into silica gel after aging, washing, and drying. Depending on the water content, it is translucent or white solid. The current available products include irregular granular, spherical, and microspherical silica gels, which are often used as catalyst.

Liquid silica gel is usually used in industry to make silicone by removing sodium from water glass by ion exchange. It is a translucent milky white liquid with high stability. After drying, the silica sol becomes a porous solid. It is widely used to produce food-grade daily necessities such as silicone baby bowl, silicone baby plate, silicone ice mould, etc.

Liquid silica gel is easier to process than solid silica gel. Due to the fluidity of liquid silica gel, it can be molded, calendered, and extruded with lower energy consumption, which also contributes to its high production efficiency advantage. That’s also why liquid silica gel is mainly used to produce food-grade silicone products while solid silica gel is mainly used to produce industrial products.

Anyway, these are the main differences between solid silica gel and liquid silica gel, hope you will have a better understand of their differences after reading this article. If you are interested in buying silicone products, please contact us:  admin@yk-espring.com