Silica mesoporous materials synthesized with bio-template applied in the capture of carbon dioxide

ANDREA TAVELLA; MATIAS MARIÑO; ALICIA BOIX; SOLEDAD ASPROMONTE

Florencia

Congreso; EUROPACAT 2017 13th European Congress on Catalysys; 2018

This work presents the study of the synthesis of mesoporous materials using a natural structuring agent. Starch is a polysaccharide formed by the mixture of amylose and amylopectin, generating long chains and characterized by having a lipophilic and hydrophilic extreme. Therefore, the synthesis was carried out in a basic medium using commercial soluble or natural corn starch as templates and TEOS as silicon source. In this sense, the effect of time and temperature on hydrolysis and/or gelatinization/retrogradation of the starch was studied. Thus, adsorbents with a wide pore size distribution and pore diameter between 5 and 45 nm and specific surface close to 200 m2·g-1 were synthesized. The presence of Si-OH and Si-O-Si groups characteristics of these materials was determined by FTIR. Finally, these solids were evaluated in the capture of carbon dioxide at 50°C. The breakthrough curves reveal a CO2 adsorption capacity of 102.4 mg CO2 /g of adsorbent. Therefore, it is possible to use the starch as bio-template, easily accessible and economically viable, to generate mesoporous materials.