Influence of synthesis parameters on the crystallinity and Si/Al ratio of NaY zeolite synthesized from kaolin

Well-crystallized high-silica NaY zeolites (Si/Al>2.5) were prepared from a reaction mixture consisting of metakaolin, sodium silicate solution and seed solution via optimization of the mixture composition and reaction conditions. The transformation from kaolin to high-silica NaY zeolite was confirmed by XRD, SEM and IR techniques. Subsequently, the influence of synthesis parameters, i.e. initial SiO2/Al2O3, initial Na2O/SiO2, initial H2O/SiO2, aging time of the seed solution, crystallization temperature and crystallization time, on the NaY growth was investigated in terms of crystallinity and Si/Al ratio. The results showed that the effects of initial SiO2/Al2O3, initial Na2O/SiO2 and initial H2O/SiO2 on the crystallinity and Si/Al ratio of NaY zeolite are similar to those observed in the conventional syntheses of NaY zeolites only using sodium silicate solution as silicon source. However, due to the use of metakaolin as the main silicon and aluminum sources in the present study, a long crystallization induction period of 20 h was achieved, which can be attributed to the dissolution of metakaolin. In addition, different from the conventional syntheses of zeolite NaY, pure NaY zeolites (i.e. without NaP zeolite impurity) were still obtained even at 120 °C because of the use of a large quantity of seed solution (23 wt%) in the reaction mixture. As the aging time of the seed solution increased from 3.5 h to 22 h, the relative crystallinity of the NaY zeolite first increased sharply and then reached a plateau, while the Si/Al ratio first increased rapidly up to a maximum value of 2.75 corresponding to an aging time of 6.5 h, and then decreased sharply with the aging time.