6533b828fe1ef96bd1288bff

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Contribution and limitation of infrared spectroscopy technique to understand physisorption processes on MFI zeolites

subject

description

This manuscript is devoted to the study of adsorption processes by FTIR spectroscopy. The experimental results concern the adsorption of ethylene, trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, sulfur hexafluoride or p-xylene on MFI zeolites, more especially on silicalite-1. The first step of the work was to develop a new experimental device and procedure in order to obtain reliable absorption infrared data and to improve results previously obtained by a prototype. The first main result is to characterize, maybe for the first time, the evolution of the spectrum of the adsorbent all during the adsorption process. Experiments reveal that the zeolite infrared spectrum undergoes strong modifications when trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene or p-xylene molecules are adsorbed. These modifications have been correlated to adsorbent phase transitions characterized elsewhere by other experimental techniques. Another main result concerns the characterisation of the adsorbed phase during the accumulation of molecules in the zeolite. From a general point of view, the confinement of admolecules inside microporosity induces small shifts of vibrational bands of the adsorbed phase without significant modification of their shape. In contrast, the area of these bands depends on the nature and the number of adsorbed molecules. Indeed, it linearly increases with loading for the adsorption of ethylene, sulfur hexafluoride or trichloroethylene. On the contrary, when stepped isotherms are obtained, that is the case for tetrachloroethylene or p-xylene adsorption, the area of these bands stay constant within a filling domain 3-6 molec.(u.c)-1. The assumption of the formation of dimeric structures is proposed to explain such a singular behaviour.