High-quality mesoporous SiO2 nanospheres via a confined jet impingement continuous microchannel reactor

Abstract

High surface area mesoporous silica (SiO2) nanospheres has been considered an ideal material for the catalytic, adsorption and drug delivery. However, synthesis of ultra-high specific surface area mesoporous silica nanoparticles with well-defined sphere structure and small particle size (< 200 nm) is still challenging. Here, a two-stream confined jet impingement continuous microchannel reactor is proposed to produce novel mesoporous silica nanospheres (MSNs) with ultra-high specific surface area (SSA) and abundant worm-like meso-porosity. The as-obtained MSNs with worm-like mesoporous structure were produced with average particle diameter of 142 ~ 207 nm, high SSA of 1347 ~ 1854 m2/g, total pore volume of 0.86 ~ 1.23 cm3/g and pore diameter of 2.6 ~ 3.3nm. Moreover, the shear force field in the microchannel reactor on the mesoscopic structure of MSNs was simulated by mesoscopic kinetics. Additionally, MSNs was used as the silicon source to synthesize lithium silicate (Li4SiO4), which enhanced carbon dioxide (CO2) adsorption of 27.18 wt% at 650 ℃.