Tungsten-substituted Silicalite-1 with an interconnected hollow structure for catalytic epoxidation of cyclohexene

A novel hierarchical tungsten-substituted Silicalite-1 zeolite with the highly interconnected hollow structure (HWS-1) was synthesized for the first time by post-treating the purely microporous tungsten-substituted Silicalite-1 (WS-1) through simultaneous desilication and tungstation, in which a combination of sodium hydroxide and tetrapropyl ammonium hydroxide (TPAOH) was used to achieve a systematic balance between dissolution and recrystallization and further promote the synchronous tungstation with using sodium tungstate dihydrate as a tungsten source. Under an optimum addition ratio of NaOH/TPAOH, the resulted HWS-1 exhibited not only well retained microporosity and crystallinity but also obviously enlarged external surface area and mesopore volume in contrast to the parent WS-1. Furthermore, the effective tungstation also facilitated the substitution and increased the amount of coordinated W species in zeolite frameworks. The catalytic performance of HWS-1 was evaluated by the epoxidation of cyclohexene with using H2O2 as oxidant. Benefited by the highly interconnected hollow structure and more accessible active sites on the enlarged external surface, the HWS-1 catalyst revealed a higher catalytic activity with improved cyclohexene conversion than WS-1. Moreover, it was found that a significant positive effect on promoting epoxidation was achieved by tungsten-substituted Silicalite-1 (WS-1 and HWS-1) catalysts reflecting at a much higher selectivity of epoxide (>79%) in comparison with titanium-substituted Silicalite-1 (TS-1) (~50% selectivity of epoxide), due to their superior hydrophobicity and suitably weaker acidity, which further demonstrated the potential application of the developed hierarchical tungsten-substituted Silicalite-1 as a candidate catalyst for epoxidation and other selective oxidation reactions.