Natural Mordenite from Spain as Pozzolana

This work deals with anomalous concentrations of natural mordenite in the southeast of Spain. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) studies evidenced that the samples contain mainly monomineral zeolitic phase of mordenite (70% to 74%), usually accompanied by smectite (montmorillonite), the principal component of bentonite. A study of the applicability of these zeolites is presented to establish the potential use as pozzolanic cements. For comparative purposes, synthetic commercial mordenite is also characterized and tested. The initial mixtures were prepared using cement and mordenite at a 75:25 ratio. Chemical analysis and a pozzolanicity test showed the high pozzolanic character. These mixtures were further added to sand and water, yielding the cement specimens to be used as concrete. Mechanical test results showed that the mechanical compression at 7 and 28 days fall into the range of 19.23 to 43.05 MegaPascals (MPa) for the cement specimens built with natural mordenites. The obtained results fall in the same range of cement specimens prepared with natural clinoptilolite, using mixtures within the European requirement for commercial concretes. Thus, these results and the low cost of natural mordenite of San José de los Escullos deposit supports the potential use of natural mordenite as pozzolanic cement.

Effect of surface silicon modification of H-beta zeolites for alkylation of benzene with 1-dodecene

H-beta zeolites of 100–200 nm (named BEA-L) and 20–30 nm (named BEA-S) were treated by chemical liquid deposition (CLD) of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) to improve the selectivity of 2-phenyl linear alkylbenzene (2-LAB) from benzene alkylation with 1-dodecene. The results indicate that H-beta zeolite with a smaller crystal size has a longer lifetime due to shorter channels and less diffusion limitation. The deposited SiO₂ layers passivated the external surface acid sites of the zeolite and made the pores narrower. BEA-L lost more external Brønsted acid sites than BEA-S with the same added amount of TEOS, which was due to the severe aggregation of BEA-S grains. This increased passivation gave BEA-L increased 2-LAB selectivity. And when the added amount of SiO₂ was 7.20 wt% of the parent zeolite, the selectivity of 2-LAB over BEA-L significantly increased from 41.9% to 54.7% while that of BEA-S only increased by 2%.

β zeolite with large grain size has higher external surface acid passivation efficiency while that of β zeolite with small grain size is very low due to severe agglomeration.