Synthesis of Hierarchical SAPO-34 Using Green Non-Ionic Surfactant Triton X-100 with Improved Catalytic Performance in Methanol to Olefin Reaction

SAPO-34 has excellent performance in the methanol-to-olefin (MTO) reaction because of effective shape selectivity and mild strong acidity [1]. The main problem of SAPO-34 is short life time due to diffusion limitations in its structure. Diffusion limitations cause not only the decrease of catalytic lifetime, but also the low selectivity of light olefins during MTO reactions [2]. Synthesis of SAPO-34 with hierarchically porosity, by decrease diffusion limitations can lead to improve mass transport and catalytic performance in MTO reaction. In this work, the hierarchical SAPO-34 has been successfully synthesized by using tetraethyl ammonium hydroxide as a microporous template and cheap and green non-ionic surfactant triton X-100 (TX-100) as a mesoporous template. The effect of TX-100/Al3+ ratio on the structural and textural properties of hierarchical SAPO-34 and its catalytic performance in methanol to olefin (MTO) reaction was investigated. Physical properties of obtained samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), NH3 temperature-programmed desorption, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The results indicated that with decrease of TX-100/Al3+ ratio from 0.3 to 0.085, crystallinity, light olefins selectivity and catalyst life time were enhanced.