Synthesis of hexagonal and cubic mesoporous silica using power plant bottom ash

An alkali fusion method was adopted to extract silicate species from coal bottom ash in a power plant and the supernatant solution was used for the synthesis of MCM-41, SBA-15, and SBA-16 mesoporous silica materials. The minor impurities present in the bottom ash were not found to be detrimental to the successful formation of mesoporous silica phases. Additional silica from sodium metasilicate was introduced to improve the textural properties for SBA-15 and SBA-16. According to SEM analyses, particle morphology of the samples gradually approaches those prepared using pure chemical as the amount of external silica source increases. XRD analyses confirmed well-ordered mesostructures in all of these silica materials. N2 adsorption–desorption isotherms of MCM-41 prepared using bottom ash showed a type IV isotherm with a region of steep increase due to capillary condensation, whilst SBA-15 and SBA-16 showed type IV isotherm with H1 and H2 hysteresis loops, respectively. 27Al MAS NMR analysis of MCM-41 synthesized from the supernatant solution reveals that the extracted Al species from bottom ash were tetrahedrally incorporated in the framework. TEM clearly showed the uniform pore structure of the materials prepared using the industrial waste.