The Role of Silanols in
the Interactions between Methyl <i>tert</i>-Butyl Ether
and High-Silica Faujasite Y: An Infrared
Spectroscopy and Computational Model Study
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Abstract
It is generally believed that the retention of methyl <i>tert</i>-butyl ether (MTBE) by zeolites is positively correlated
to the silica
content of these materials. Nevertheless, highly dealuminated zeolites
can contain relevant amounts of silanol groups. In this study, the
effect of these point defects in a zeolite Y (SiO<sub>2</sub>/Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> = 200) on the adsorption of MTBE was evaluated
by means of infrared spectroscopy, supported by DFT calculations.
The adsorption process is found to occur in two steps, involving isolated
silanol sites and the siloxane network of the zeolite, respectively,
with an average loading of 1.3 molecules per cage in the first and
1.3 molecules in the second stage. Both external and internal isolated
silanol groups (stretching at 3746 and 3738 cm<sup>–1</sup>, respectively) are involved in the MTBE adsorption process with
the formation of H-bonded complexes and associated shifts (516 and
358 cm<sup>–1</sup>, respectively), consistent with a H-bonding
strength higher for external than for the internal ones. However,
MTBE is more tightly adsorbed on the internal silanols as a result
of the cage confinement effect. The band assigned to the methyl symmetric
stretching of the CH<sub>3</sub>O– group can be used to discriminate
between H-bond and van der Waals MTBE–zeolite interactions
(2843 and 2828 cm<sup>–1</sup>, respectively). Ab initio models
were used to compute the harmonic frequencies of different MTBE–zeolite
models and to simulate the cage confinement of one and three ether
molecules