Titanium(IV) in the organic-structure-directing-agent-free synthesis of hydrophobic and large-pore molecular sieves as redox catalysts

Abstract

Titanium(IV) incorporated into the framework of molecular sieves can be used as a highly active and sustainable catalyst for the oxidation of industrially important organic molecules. Unfortunately, the current process for the incorporation of titanium(IV) requires a large amount of expensive organic molecules used as organic-structure-directing agents (OSDAs), and this significantly increases the production costs and causes environmental problems owing to the removal of OSDAs by pyrolysis. Herein, an OSDA-free process was developed to incorporate titanium(IV) into BEA-type molecular sieves for the first time. More importantly, the hydrophobic environment and the robust, 3 D, and large pore structure of the titanium(IV)-incorporated molecular sieves fabricated from the OSDA-free process created a catalyst that was extremely active and selective for the epoxidation of bulky cyclooctene in comparison to Ti-incorporated BEA-type molecular sieves synthesized with OSDAs and commercial titanosilicate TS-1.

Keywords: heterogeneous catalysis; molecular sieves; synthetic methods; titanium; zeolites.