A facile synthesis of SAPO-34 molecular sieves with microwave irradiation in wide reaction conditions

Various reaction conditions including temperature, time and type and concentration of templates have been changed in order to facilely synthesize, especially with microwave (MW) heating, SAPO-34 molecular sieves. SAPO-34 molecular sieve can be synthesized rapidly with microwave irradiation from a gel containing tetraethylammonium hydroxide (TEAOH) as a template. However, other several templating molecules lead to SAPO-5 molecular sieve under microwave irradiation even though SAPO-34 is obtained by conventional electric synthesis from the same reactant gels. Moreover, SAPO-34 can be obtained more easily by increasing the TEAOH or silica concentration or by increasing the reaction temperature. SAPO-34 can be obtained within 5 min in a selected condition (high temperature of 210 °C) with microwave heating, which may lead to a continuous production of the important material. SAPO-34 synthesized by microwave irradiation is homogeneous and small in size and shows acidity and a stable performance in the dehydration of methanol and 2-butanol to olefins suggesting potential applications in acid catalysis.