Exploring the influence of mesoporosity in hard carbon-templated hierarchical SAPO-5 for ethanol dehydration

Matthew E. Potter, Evangeline B. McShane, Nienke L. Visser, Johannes D. Meeldijk, Lisa J. Allen, Stephen M. King, Marina Carravetta, Petra E. de Jongh, Bart D. Vandegehuchte, Robert Raja

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Microporous solid acid catalysts offer a vast amount of control over chemical processes. However, their coveted smaller pores also have several drawbacks, including a limited substrate scope, faster deactivation, and pore blockage. As such, there are significant advantages to introducing mesopores alongside the microporous framework, to create hierarchically porous frameworks. This work explores the influence of adapting our microporous synthetic procedure for silicoaluminophosphate (SAPO-5) to include different shaped carbon nanotemplates. The differing size of the mesopores formed is explored using nitrogen physisorption, transmission electron microscopy and small angle neutron scattering. In this work, we uniquely use small angle neutron scattering for probing hierarchical silicoaluminophosphates synthesised with hard templating methods. Here small angle neutron scattering was able to probe the shape and size of the mesopores and link their accessibility to their catalytic performance.
Original languageEnglish
JournalRSC Applied Interfaces
Issue number6
Early online date8 Aug 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 8 Aug 2024

Funding

MEP, EBM, MC, NLV, PEdJ and RR acknowledge the TotalEnergies “Consortium on metal nanocatalysis” project for funding. The authors would like to thank the Science & Technology Facilities Council for the provision of neutron beamtime (experiment XB2190146, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.XB2190146-1). This work benefited from the use of the SasView application, originally developed under NSF award DMR-0520547. SasView contains code developed with funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the SINE2020 project, grant agreement no. 654000. ICP analysis was performed by MEDAC. SEM imaging was performed at the Biological Imaging Unit at Southampton General Hospital. EM imaging was performed at the Electron Microscopy Centre of the Utrecht University. TPD-measurements were performed at the UK Catalysis Hub, and Prof Andy Beale is kindly thanked for resources and support provided via the membership of the UK Catalysis Hub Consortium and funded by current EPSRC grants: EP/R026939/1 and EP/R026815/1.

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