A facile approach to synthesize MCM-41 mesoporous materials from iron ore tailing: Influence of the synthesis conditions on the structural properties

• A green and facile synthesis of MCM-41 is used iron ore tailing as the Si source.
• The obtained MCM-41 exhibited well-ordered mesostructure and high surface area.
• This method has the potential application in the large-scale production of MCM-41.

In this paper, a facile synthesis route to obtain mesoporous MCM-41 silica using cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) as template and iron ore tailing as raw material was reported. The effects of various synthesis conditions on the mesostructure properties of MCM-41, including the molar ratio of CTAB to SiO2, gelation pH, aging temperature, aging time and calcination temperature, were investigated in detail. Powder X-ray diffraction (XRD), N2 adsorption–desorption isotherms, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques had been employed to characterize the samples. The molar ratio of CTAB to SiO2 and the gelation pH play an important role in the synthesis of ordered MCM-41 mesoporous material structure. The synthesized MCM-41 mesoporous material possessed a BET surface area of 882 m2/g, a pore size of 4.2 nm and a pore volume of 1.019 cm3/g in the condition of CTAB to SiO2 in a molar ratio of 0.10:1, pH of 10, crystallization temperature of 100 °C, crystallization time of 48 h and calcination at 550 °C for 3 h. All the results demonstrated the feasibility of employing iron ore tailing as silicon source to produce MCM-41 and provided a new way to convert a solid waste to a value-added material, which has the potential application in the large-scale production of MCM-41.

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