Facile one-pot synthesis of Fe-UZM-35 catalysts for ammonia selective catalytic reduction

Abstract

Owing to the narrow crystallization field, the synthesis of the large-pore zeolite UZM-35 with MSE topology starting from amorphous reagents in the presence of dimethyldipropylammonium ions as an organic structure-directing agent is often non-reproducible. Here we report the synthesis of UZM-35 via an interzeolite conversion route using USY zeolites, as the sole source of Al and Si, and a small amount of previously synthesized UZM-35 as seed crystals. We also present the one-pot synthesis of Fe-UZM-35 with the best low-temperature NH3-SCR activity among the iron-exchanged zeolites reported so far. These synthesis routes showed high reproducibility, together with considerably faster crystallization kinetics (≤1.5 vs 7 days) compared to conventional UZM-35 synthesis. When the Fe loading level was properly adjusted, the NH3-SCR activity of one-pot-synthesized Fe-UZM-35 was found to be essentially the same as that of post-synthetically exchanged Fe-UZM-35 due to the similarity in the nature of their iron active sites.