One-pot synthesis of iron doped mesoporous silica catalyst for propane ammoxidation

Iron doped hexagonal mesoporous silica (Fe-HMS) was successfully prepared by one-pot direct synthesis at ambient temperature by using dodecylamine as a templating agent. The catalyst has been characterized by various techniques including XRD, DR-UV-Vis, FTIR, SEM and N-2 adsorption. The obtained material exhibits very large surface area (above 1000 m(2) g(-1)), mesoporosity with narrow distribution of pores (around 4 nm) and nano-crystallites with the 20-30 nm in size. The concentration of iron in the catalyst was 0.95 wt%. The prepared material was tested in the direct ammoxidation of propane. It was shown that direct synthesis leads to better dispersion of the metal compared to the material prepared by impregnation of pure HMS silica. It is also demonstrated that this material is able to catalyze the direct ammoxidation of propane and shows quite high selectivity to acrylonitrile (52% at 11% conversion of propane).