Coal Fly Ash consumption for sustainable environment management: Crystallization kinetics of mesoporous molecular sieve MCM-41

We report ecological synthesis of mesoporous molecular sieves of M41S family using coal fly ash (CFA) available in ample as the thermal power station waste during electricity generation. This contributes to the green synthesis of MCM-41 at a cheaper production cost. Coal fly ash was used to synthesize MCM-41 by alkali fusion followed by hydro-thermal treatment and was characterized using various techniques viz. XRD, SEM, FTIR, TGA-DTG, N₂-sorption for surface area measurement etc. The synthesis and history dependent parameters were optimized to obtain highly crystalline phase of MCM-41. During the synthesis crystallization kinetics was studied. The highly crystalline nature and well ordered phase was obtained at 120°C with utmost BET surface area 1053m²/g with high purity. The activation energy of crystallization kinetics was found to be 160.31 kJ/mole. C T