Mesoporous molecular sieves, structural

The development of composite micro/mesoporous materials opens new perspectives for the improvement of zeolytic catalysts. These materials combine the advantages of both zeolites and mesoporous molecular sieves, in particular, strong acidity, high thermal and hydrothermal stability and improved diffusivity of bulky molecules due to reduction of the intracrystalline diffusion path length, resulting from creation of secondary mesoporous structure. It can be expected that the creation of secondary mesoporous structure in zeolitic crystals, on the one hand, will result in the improvement of the effectiveness factor in hydroisomerization process and, on the other hand, will lead to the decrease of the residence time of products and minimization of secondary reactions, such as cracking. This will result in an increase of both the conversion and the selectivity to isomerization products. 

Since this initial work there has been a plethora of literature on mesoporous molecular sieves. In addition to the silica and aluminosilicate frameworks similar mesoporous structures of metal oxides now include the oxides of Fe, Ti, V, Sb, Zr, Mn, W and others. Templates have been expanded to include nonionic, neutral surfactants and block copolymers. Pore sizes have broadened to the macroscopic size, in excess of 40 nm in diameter. A recent detailed review of the mesoporous molecular sieves is given in ref [73]. Vartuli and Degnan have reported a Mobil M41S mesoporous-based catalyst in commercial use, but to date the application has not been publicly identified.[74]. 

The first part of the book documents the history, structure, chemistry, formulation and characterizations of zeolites in Chapters 1-4. The past 60 years have seen a progression in molecular sieve materials from aluminosilicate zeolites to micro-porous silica polymorphs, microporous aluminophosphate-based polymorphs, metallosihcate and metallophosphate compositions, octahedral-tetrahedral frameworks, mesoporous molecular sieves and, most recently, hybrid metal organic frameworks (MOFs). 

The X-ray powder diffraction patterns of the parent materials showed the hexagonal structure characteristic for MCM-41 and SBA-15, and the cubic structure for MCM-48, respectively. All the patterns matched well with the reported patterns, confirming the successful synthesis of the mesoporous molecular sieves. The intensity of the reflection did not change essentially upon loading the carrier with the organometallic complexes, nor after a catalytic cycle, showing that the mesoporous structures were not affected by incorporation of the catalyst. 

In principle the bicontinuous 3-dimensional network structure of MCM-48 would act as a good catalytic support.[7] However, its lower hydrothermal and thermal stability has led to much less application of MCM-48 in catalysis. Recently, a family of mesoporous molecular sieves (denoted as MSU-G) with vesicle-like hierarchical structure, worm-like mesoporous structure and bicontinuous nano-porous silica had been synthesized.[8-10] It was proposed that highly accessible mesoporous materials could be obtained through different synthetic procedure and composition. 

The structures of mesoporous molecular sieves were closely related to the surfactants to silica ratios.4 Because of the absence of high order reflections on the XRD patterns of all LZC... 

In this current work, cerium-modified MCM-41 mesoporous molecular sieve was synthesized using heptahydrated cerium chloride, colloidal fumed-silica, sodium hydroxide, cethyltrimethylammonium bromide and water. The incorporation of cerium to MCM-41 improved the quality, stability and acid properties of the resulting ordered mesoporous material. Its surface and structural properties were extensively studied by nitrogen adsorption and high-resolution thermogravimetry. 

Transition metal complexes encapsulated in the channel of zeolites have received a lot of attention, due to their high catalytic activity, selectivity and stability in field of oxidation reactions. Generally, transition metal complex have only been immobilized in the classical large porous zeolites, such as X, Y[l-4], But the restricted sizes of the pores and cavities of the zeolites not only limit the maximum size of the complex which can be accommodated, but also impose resistance on the diffusion of substrates and products. Mesoporous molecular sieves, due to their high surface area and ordered pore structure, offer the potentiality as a good host for immobilizing transition complexes[5-7]. The previous reports are mainly about molecular sieves encapsulated mononuclear metal complex, whereas the reports about immobilization of heteronuclear metal complex in the host material are few. Here, we try to prepare MCM-41 loaded with binuclear Co(II)-La(III) complex with bis-salicylaldehyde ethylenediamine schiff base. 

In the present work the synthesis of highly dispersed niobium or titanium containing mesoporous molecular sieves catalyst by direct grafting of different niobium and titanium compounds is reported. Grafting is achieved by anchoring the desired compounds on the surface hydroxyl groups located on the inner and outer surface of siliceous MCM-41 and MCM-48 mesoporous molecular sieves. Catalytic activity was evaluated in the liquid phase epoxidation of a-pinene with hydrogen peroxide as oxidant and the results are compared with widely studied titanium silicalites. The emphasis is directed mainly on catalytic applications of niobium or titanium anchored material to add a more detailed view on their structural physicochemical properties. 

Table 1 shows the structural properties of the titanium-incorporated mesoporous molecular sieves. The surface areas of all samples were over 750 m2/g, being typical of M41S group materials. After grafting, surface area and total pore volume decreased [8],... 

Here we report the synthesis and catalytic application of a new porous clay heterostructure material derived from synthetic saponite as the layered host. Saponite is a tetrahedrally charged smectite clay wherein the aluminum substitutes for silicon in the tetrahedral sheet of the 2 1 layer lattice structure. In alumina - pillared form saponite is an effective solid acid catalyst [8-10], but its catalytic utility is limited in part by a pore structure in the micropore domain. The PCH form of saponite should be much more accessible for large molecule catalysis. Accordingly, Friedel-Crafts alkylation of bulky 2, 4-di-tert-butylphenol (DBP) (molecular size (A) 9.5x6.1x4.4) with cinnamyl alcohol to produce 6,8-di-tert-butyl-2, 3-dihydro[4H] benzopyran (molecular size (A) 13.5x7.9x 4.9) was used as a probe reaction for SAP-PCH. This large substrate reaction also was selected in part because only mesoporous molecular sieves are known to provide the accessible acid sites for catalysis [11]. Conventional zeolites and pillared clays are poor catalysts for this reaction because the reagents cannot readily access the small micropores. 

The role of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) in characterisation of silica-based mesoporous molecular sieves is discussed. It is demonstrated that TEM can not only serve as a supporting technique as presented in many relevant reports, but also give us a lot of valuable structural information which could not be gained from other experiments. 

Determination of the phase purity of mesoporous molecular sieves (MMSs) [1,2] is important in synthesis, modification and application of these materials [3-7]. Many of the synthesis procedures reported so far involved various phase transformations [8-20] and thus the desired MMS product may be contaminated with some mesostructured impurities. One of the possible impurities is a lamellar phase, which readily forms under various synthesis conditions [1,8-25]. Because of its layered structure, the lamellar phase collapses upon calcination [1] and therefore constitutes a disordered impurity of calcined MMS samples. 

New directions in the preparation of framework structures of different chemical composition and of large-pore molecular sieves include the development of phosphate-containing molecular sieves and mesoporous molecular sieves. 

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