Abstract
The synthesis of SBA-15 has been optimized using sodium silicate, an inexpensive precursor of SBA-15. In this work, the influence of synthesis times of the precipitation and the hydrothermal treatment steps, on the textural properties developed as well as for reducing the toxic compounds generated in tobacco smoking, has been studied. The hydrothermal treatment has been proved to be necessary to obtain materials with adequate performance in this particular application. Twenty-four hours of hydrothermal treatment provide materials with the best properties. Although the reaction stage usually involves the mixing of reagents during 24 h, 40 min is enough to obtain a material with stick-like morphology and typical textural properties. Moreover, between 1 and 2 h of reaction time, the material proved to have the best performance for the purpose of reducing the toxicity of the products generated during the tobacco smoking process. These results are of great significance for an eventual scaling up to industrial scale of the SBA-15 manufacturing process. Results of a pilot plant experiment in a batch of 4 kg of SBA-15 are reported.
Highlights
According to the IUPAC, mesoporous materials present pores in the range of 2–50 nm.Such pores can have different shapes such as spherical, cylindrical, platelets, sticks or fibers, and can be arranged in varying structures [1]
Our research group has studied the use of MCM-41, Santa Barbara Amorphous (SBA)-15 and zeolites (HUSY, HZSM-5 and Hβ) to reduce the yields of toxic compounds in tobacco smoke and we have reported that the addition of these materials to tobacco allows the reduction of most of the compounds present in the mainstream of tobacco smoke [28,38,39,40]
The results obtained show that, despite obtaining a material with acceptable textural properties when eliminating the hydrothermal treatment, this stage is necessary to obtain good reductions in the compounds generated in the tobacco smoking process
Summary
According to the IUPAC, mesoporous materials present pores in the range of 2–50 nm Such pores can have different shapes such as spherical, cylindrical, platelets, sticks or fibers, and can be arranged in varying structures [1]. In 1992, a new family of ordered mesoporous materials was synthesized by Mobile Corporation laboratories [2] including MCM-41, with hexagonally ordered cylindrical pores, and MCM-48 with cubic pore structure. These materials are characterized by having an ordered porous system with a narrow distribution of diameters, high surface area and pore volume.
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