The effect of amorphous silica support on the catalytic activity of liquid-exfoliated monolayered MCM-56 zeolite

Abstract Recently reported groundbreaking discovery of efficient delamination of zeolite MCM-56, producing colloidal suspensions of MWW monolayers dispersed in the liquid phase, created unprecedented possibilities for the synthesis of a zeolite catalyst. Based on this innovation, the concept of using MWW monolayers to prepare silica-supported zeolite nanosheet catalysts suitable for transformations of large organic molecules was explored in this work. A series of silica-MWW preparations was synthesized from colloidal suspensions of the monolayers, using both solid and colloidal silica sources. The synthesized solids were thoroughly characterized with various physicochemical methods and their catalytic performance was tested in alkylation of mesitylene with benzyl alcohol. The obtained results indicate that solids containing MWW layers dispersed on silica show promising catalytic properties. The mixed MWW:silica catalysts synthesized from dispersions of MWW monolayers and liquid silica were found to exhibit high specific catalytic activity (with TOF values of 3.4 × 10 −3 to 4.8 × 10 −3 s −1 ), despite the high content of inactive amorphous silica support (40–60%). Materials synthesized from solid fumed and precipitated silicas showed low or negligible overall activity, which could be attributed to the small incorporation of the zeolitic active phase. For one of such materials, a notable high TOF (4.8 × 10 −3 s −1 ) was found. It was found earlier that ethanol is an effective flocculent for zeolite layers by themselves, but in the presence of solid silica its efficiency was reduced.