A hybrid sol–gel synthesis of mesostructured SiC with tunable porosity and its application as a support for propane oxidative dehydrogenation.

Porous silicon carbide (SiC) is of great potential as catalyst support in several industrially important reactions because of its unique thermophysical characteristics. Previously porous SiC was mostly obtained by a simple sol–gel or reactive replica technique which can only produce a material with low or medium surface area (< 50 m2 g(−1)). Here we report a new hybrid sol–gel approach to synthesize mesostructured SiC with high surface area (151–345 m2 g(−1)) and tunable porosity. The synthesis route involves a facile co-condensation of TEOS and alkyloxysilane with different alkyl-chain lengths followed by carbothermal reduction of the as-prepared alkyloxysilane precursors at 1350 °C. The resulting materials were investigated by X-ray diffraction, N2 adsorption-desorption, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. A mechanism for the tailored synthesis of mesostructured SiC was tentatively proposed. To demonstrate the catalytic application of these materials, vanadia were loaded on the mesostructured SiC supports, and their catalytic performance in oxidative dehydrogenation of propane was evaluated. Vanadia supported on the mesostructured silicon carbide exhibits higher selectivity to propylene than those on conventional supports such as Al2O3 and SiO2 at the same propane conversion levels, mainly owing to its outstanding thermal conductivity which makes contributions to dissipate the heat generated from reaction thus alleviating the hot spots effect and over-oxidation of propylene.