Organotemplate-free, seed-directed, and rapid synthesis of Al-rich zeolite MTT with improved catalytic performance in isomerization of m-xylene

m-xylene isomerization over zeolites is of great importance because of the shortage of p-xylene currently. Here, we show an organotemplate-free, seed-directed, and rapid synthesis of Al-rich zeolite MTT (denoted as ZJM-6) with improved catalytic performance in isomerization of m-xylene to p-xylene. Physicochemical characterizations including XRD, SEM, Ar sorption isotherms, Al-27 NMR, and NH3-TPD show that the zeolitic product has good crystallinity, uniform crystals, high surface area, tetrahedral Al3+ species, and abundant acidic sites. Interestingly, the crystallization of ZJM-6 takes very short time (5 h at 170 degrees C), compared with conventional MU zeolites (20 h at 170 degrees C). Very importantly, catalytic tests for m-xylene isomerization show that H-form of ZJM-6 zeolite exhibits superior performance, which could be potentially important for industrial applications of ZJM-6 zeolite as a candidate in the future. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.