Large mesopore generation in an amorphous silica-alumina by controlling the pore size with the gel skeletal reinforcement and its application to catalytic cracking

Abstract

Tetraethoxy orthosilicate (TEOS) was used not only as a precursor of silica, but also as an agent which reinforces the skeleton of silica-gel to prepare an aerogel and resultant silica and silica-alumina with large pore size and pore volume. In this gel skeletal reinforcement, the strength of silica aerogel skeleton was enhanced by aging with TEOS/2-propanol mixed solution to prevent the shrink of the pores. When silica aerogel was reinforced by TEOS solution, the pore diameter and pore volume of calcined silica could be controlled by the amount of TEOS solution and reached 30 nm and 3.1 cm3/g. The results from N2 adsorption measurement indicated that most of pores for this silica consisted of mesopores. Silica-alumina was prepared by the impregnation of an aluminum tri-sec-butoxide/2-butanol solution with obtained silica. Mixed catalysts were prepared by the combination of β-zeolite (26 wt%) and prepared silica-aluminas with large mesopore (58 wt%) and subsequently the effects of their pore sizes on the catalytic activity and the product selectivity were investigated in catalytic cracking of n-dodecane at 500 °C. The mixed catalysts exhibited not only comparable activity to that for single zeolite, but also unique selectivity where larger amounts of branched products were formed. © 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.