The activity and selectivity of Mo/ZSM-5, benchmarking catalyst for the non-oxidative dehydroaromatization of methane, strongly depend on the cluster size, spatial distribution, and chemical environment of the Mo-based active sites. This study discloses the use of an ultrasound-assisted ion-exchange (US-IE) technique as an alternative Mo/ZSM-5 synthesis procedure in order to promote metal dispersion along the zeolite framework. For this purpose, a plate transducer (91.8 kHz) is employed to transmit the ultrasonic irradiation (US) into the ion-exchange reactor. The physico-chemical properties and catalytic activity of samples prepared under the said irradiation procedure and traditional impregnation (IWI) method are critically evaluated. Characterization results suggest that US neither affects the crystalline structure nor the particle size of the parent zeolite. However, US-IE promotes molybdenum species dispersion, avoids clustering at the external fresh zeolite surface and enhances molybdate species anchoring to the zeolite framework with respect to IWI. Despite the improved metal dispersion, the catalytic activity between catalysts synthesized by US-IE and IWI is comparable. This suggests that the sole initial dispersion enhancement does not suffice to boost the catalyst productivity and further actions such ZSM-5 support and catalyst pre-conditioning are required. Nevertheless, the successful implementation of US-IE and the resulting metal dispersion enhancement pave the way toward the application of this technique to the synthesis of other dispersed catalysts and materials of interest.
Towards a library of atomically dispersed catalysts
