Study on the Acid Treatment of Titanium Silicalite TS-1

Titanium silicalite (TS-1) is one kind of heteroatom molecular sieve synthesized by Taramasso and his coworkers in 1983^1]. Its specific catalytic oxidation properties have attracted much attention of many scientists^2]. The synthesis of TS-1 need use expensive TPAOH as the template; this restrains its industrial application. There are many reports on low cost TS-1, such as using TPABr to replace TPAOH, silica sol to replace tetra-ethyl orthosilicate^3-5]. In our lab, TS-1 was synthesized by using TPABr as the template and silica sol as silicon source,and the amount of TPABr was decreased to 0.05 (TPABr/SiO₂). The as-synthesized TS-1 has some differences compared with TS-1 synthesized according to the standard method, such as large crystal size, trace aluminum, extra-framework titanium, high activity in the epoxidation of propylene with dilute H₂O₂ and low selectivity of propylene oxide (20-30%). The low selectivity of PO is attributed to the acidity of TS-1 resulted from the trace aluminum and silicon hydroxyl. In order to increase the selectivity of PO, it is necessary to add some base to the reaction mixture. Generally, acid treatment can remove aluminum and other elements and impurity to improve catalyst. In this paper, the effect of the acid treatment on the physicochemical properties of TS-1 was studied.