Tailored synthesis of organised mesoporous aluminas prepared by non-ionic surfactant templating using a Box-Wilson CCF design

Organized mesoporous aluminas (OMA) are materials that present interesting properties as catalytic supports in reactions in which bulky molecules are involved. In this work, a number of OMA were prepared using a non-ionic structure directing agent (a tri-block co-polymer). The study of the quantitative influence of some OMA synthesis conditions (water aluminium ratio (H₂O: Al), ageing temperature (T_ag), and calcination heating rate (r_cal)) on the resulting OMA textural properties (specific surface area (S_BET), pore volume (V_p) and average pore diameter (APD)) was carried out using a Box-Wilson Central Composite Design Face Centred (CCF, α: ±1). The models obtained provided a satisfactory adjustment of the experimental data. H₂O: Al was found to be the most influencing model term. The influence of T_ag and r_cal interactions on S_BET and V_p was found to be significant. Representative OMA with well differentiated pore size distributions were characterised by N₂ adsorption, XRD and TEM.