Templated Silica with Increased Surface Area and Expanded Microporosity: Synthesis, Characterization, and Catalytic Application

In this paper, we report a convenient and effective approach to synthesizing mesoporous SBA-15 materials with increased surface area (up to 836.7 cm3/g) and expanded microporosity (up to 0.22 cm3/g), where the textural properties of the synthesized materials can be systematically controlled. These micro/mesoporous composite materials exhibit excellent performance in catalysis, adsorption and separation. Moreover, the synthesized materials that supported Pd catalysts obtained through impregnation and grafting approaches were tested to explore their flexibility in toluene elimination. Grafting is an effective method to obtain highly dispersed Pd nanoparticles compared with traditional impregnation approach. The catalyst prepared via the grafting procedure possesses higher activity and CO2 selectivity than that was prepared by impregnation method. Moreover, the catalytic performance of synthesized catalysts can be well sustained during the stability tests. Therefore, these novel Pd-supported catalysts are promising materials for effective removal of some types of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as toluene.