Hydrophobic Nanosized All-Silica Beta Zeolite: Efficient Synthesis and Adsorption Application

All-silica beta zeolite, synthesized by conventional hydroxide route, usually possesses small crystal size of a few hundred nanometers but poor hydrophobicity, whereas the fluoride-mediated one exhibits to be highly hydrophobic but microsized. To obtain nanosized all-silica beta zeolite with excellent hydrophobicity, an innovative and efficient hydrothermal route via interzeolite transformation for synthesizing all-silica beta zeolite is proposed in present study. With the assistance of beta seeds and tetraethylammonium hydroxide as the structure-directing agent, siliceous beta zeolite is well-crystallized at a high solid yield via dissolution-recrystallization of all-silica ITQ-1 crystals at an extremely low water content (H2O/SiO2 molar ratio of 1). The obtained all-silica beta crystals are composed of 30–70 nm nanoparticles and highly hydrophobic just next to siliceous beta-F zeolite synthesized by environmentally unfriendly fluoride route, which is derived from relatively small amounts of internal defect sites. Thus, this beta zeolite is superior to other pure silica beta zeolites in the adsorption of large-sized volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which is mainly attributed to its high total pore volume and specific surface area as well as excellent hydrophobicity.