Catalytic oxidation performance and ion-exchange of Ti-MWW zeolite membrane with dual organic template agents and potassium carbonate

In the absence of boric acid, the tubular Ti-MWW zeolite membranes are prepared with dual organic template agents and potassium carbonate by secondary hydrothermal synthesis. 12MR cage and 10 MR of the MWW zeolite topology structure is stabilized by TMAdaOH and HMI organic template agents, K+ cations is a critical mineralization agent for preparing Ti-MWW zeolite membrane with bi-layer Ti-MWW zeolites layer in this work. Besides, ion-exchange could greatly improve the catalytic performance of the Ti-MWW zeolite membrane for phenol hydroxylation with H2O2, influences of ammonium salt, ion-exchange time and temperature on the micro-structure and catalytic performance are investigated. The upper network-like Ti-MWW zeolite layer could be dissolved and removed by ion-exchange with 0.5 M (NH4)2SO4 solution at 60 °C for 24 h, and the "lying" Ti-MWW zeolites layer is kept on the mullite support. On the other hand, ion-exchange could promote the transformation of hexacoordinated extra-framework titanium species to tetracoordinated state in the framework, part of K+ cations of Ti-MWW zeolites are replaced with NH4+ cations. Total flux and phenol conversion of the ion-exchanged Ti-MWW zeolite membrane are 14.89 kg·m−2·h−1 and 36.49 % for phenol hydroxylation by H2O2 at 50 °C.