High temperature synthesis of SAPO-34: Applying an L9 Taguchi orthogonal design to investigate the effects of experimental parameters

SAPO-34 zeolite-like particles were successfully synthesized at high temperature environment. An L9 orthogonal array of the Taguchi method was implemented to investigate the effects of experimental conditions to prepare SAPO-34 with respect to crystallinity of the final product phase. The results showed that the favorable phase crystallinity was improved by increasing the hydrothermal synthesis temperature and organic template content, whereas increasing the water content in synthesis mixture decreased the crystallinity. No significant changes in crystallinity of the final products were observed by increasing the synthesis duration. In addition, zeolite SAPO-5, which was formed as the impurity in the mid temperature runs, was not be formed at high temperature environment due to its low hydrothermal stability. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.