Mesoporous alumina, with potential excellent characteristics for catalysts, catalyst support and adsorbents, has attracted much attention during the past decades. It is normally synthesized from organic aluminum alkoxide using expensive and unrecyclable template. Recycling of the expensive templates is of great interest for scientists and of significance for economical preparation in industrialization.

Researchers in Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences demonstrated a novel way to synthesize ordered mesoporous alumina (MA) for the first time using the reproducible methylcellulose as a template, which can be recycled by exploiting its phase changes with temperature, from the simple and economical inorganic sources AlCl3 and NaAlO2 in aqueous solution.

Methylcellulose can change its morphology and phase between solid and liquid with the variation of temperature. Therefore, it can be readily recovered from mesoporous alumina precursor by washing.In the research, ordered mesoporous alumina was prepared and 63.48% of MC was recovered. Mesoporous silica was also successfully synthesized by the reproducible template methylcellulose.

The work provided a promising and significant progress for economical and green production of mesoporous alumina. The method was also appropriate for the preparation of other porous or mesoporous materials. The results were published on Microporous Mesoporous Mat., 2011, 142(2-3), 740-744.

Article link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1387181110004749

Corresponding author: ZHANG Yifei

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E-mail address: yfzhang@home.ipe.ac.cn