Hydrothermal synthesis and characterization of ZSM-5 zeolite using Kaolin

• Main Author: Lim, Rong Yao
• Format: Academic Exercise
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: QD Chemistry
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/17746/1/Hydrothermal%20synthesis%20and.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/17746/
• Institution: Universiti Malaysia Sabah

Zeolites have made an impact in the field of materials and catalysis in the past 50 years. ZSM-5 zeolite has been widely used in petrochemical industry due to its unique 10 membered ring pore opening that has the shape selectivity properties. Raw clay such as kaolin is an excellent aluminosilicate source for the synthesis of zeolite because the clay is rich in aluminium oxide and silicon dioxide. The ZSM-5 zeolite was synthesized by using hydrothermal method. In this study, the parameters of the synthesis were crystallization time and temperature ranging from 12 hours to 36 hours and 120°C to 180°C respectively. Due to the absence of XRD, only SEM and FTIR were used to characterize the samples. Images of SEM did not significantly show any formation of ZSM-5 zeolite. However, the IR spectra show the formation of band at 542cm-1in the sample synthesized with crystallization time of 36 hours and temperature of 180°C. This shows that the long crystallization time and high temperature favour the formation of ZSM-5 crystalline structure