A novel approach to the industrial preparation of mesostructured silica: Use of ion exchange resin and study of the effect of composition variables

Structured mesoporous silica was successfully synthesized using ion exchange resin as proton source to avoid the use of HCl during the synthesis and preventing the ions being freed in the media. The material was obtained from sodium silicate solution, which acts as a silica source and poly(ethylene oxide)-poly(propylene oxide)-poly(ethylene oxide) (EO19PO39EO19 denoted as P84) was used as structure-directing agent. The influence of two composition variables was studied: the ratio of silica used and the ratio of surfactant. The obtained materials were characterized through, SEM, TEM, SAXS and nitrogen adsorption-desorption isotherms. The use of sodium silicate solution as silica source instead of TEOS or TMOS and the possibility to obtain a material through an ion exchange resin is important from an application point of view due to relative cheap raw materials and equipments. The process using the ion exchange resins has around 65% of efficiency respect to Si source, which is an important data not reported in other papers, and it must be considered when planning an industrial approach to obtain these structured materials.