Mesoporous alumina (MA), with potential excellent characteristics for catalysts, catalyst support and adsorbents, has attracted much attention during the past decades. It is normally synthesized fromorganics such as aluminium alkoxide in non-aqueous media, which as a whole is often more complicated to control and more expensive than the inorganic synthesis.However, to date, conventional inorganic synthesis processes of MA are still environmentally unfriendly as they generate large masses of worthless salt by-product. A novel clean process for MA synthesis without by-products is of great interest for scientists and of significance for the economical preparation in industrialization.

Researchers in Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences demonstrated a clean process for the synthesis of MA for the first time from the easy available supersaturated sodium aluminate solution in alumina industry by the neutralization of NaHCO3, using Cetyltrimethyl Ammonium Bromide (CTAB) as a template for the mesostructure.

The novel cleanprocess can be integrated into the commonly and widely used sintering process in the alumina industry. The by-productNa2CO3 solution from the MA synthesis process can react with CO2 to regenerate the reactant NaHCO3, recycled to the synthesis process. Meanwhile, the remaining Na2CO3 solution can be recycled to the sintering process of bauxite ore, followed by the leaching of sintered bauxite to generate the other reactant for MA synthesis, supersaturated sodium aluminate solution.

The work provided a promising and significant progress for economical and green production of MA from cheap inorganic sources, which can significantly promote its production and application in industrialization. The results were published on Green Chem., 2011, 13, 2525-2530.

Corresponding author:

ZHANG Yifei

Tel: +86 10 82544827

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