Journal of Chemical Engineering & Process Technology
Open Access

Abstract

Synthesis and Characterization of Heterogeneous Catalysts and Comparison to Iron-ore

Khelifi S, Ayari F, Hassan Chehimi DB and Trabelsi-Ayadi M

The placement of metal oxide pillars between clay mineral layers modifies their physicochemical properties, including surface area, acidity, and catalytic activity. Aluminum is the most commonly used pillar cation, but the use of Fe offers a distinct opportunity to expand the range of catalytic behavior. The purpose of this study was to prepare Al-Fe-pillared smectite and to characterize the resulting materials. Al-Fe-pillared clay was synthesized from Tunisian clay precursors according to a common procedure: grinding, sieving, Na exchange, pillaring, drying and calcinations. Smectite suspension was mixed with different pillaring solutions containing Al and Fe oligomers with Fe/ (Al+Fe) percent ratios: 1; 5; 10 and 50%. Other types of material were investigated in this work; natural iron-ore was defined and characterized as heterogeneous catalysis. The structural and textural properties of synthesis and natural catalysis have been determined by X-ray diffraction, nitrogen adsorption-desorption isotherms, Transmission Electron Microscopy (MET), X-ray fluorescence, CEC and infrared spectroscopy.