Bead-Shaped Mesoporous Alumina Adsorbents for Adsorption of Ammonia

Abstract

It is of great importance to remove toxic gases by efficient methods for recovering the atmosphere to safe levels. The adsorption of the toxic gas molecules on solid adsorbents is one of the most useful techniques because of its simple operation and economic feasibility. Here, we report the uniform Bead-Shaped Mesoporous Alumina (BSMA) with tunable particle size for use as an adsorbent for removal of toxic ammonia. The BSMA particles with tunable diameters were synthesized by means of a sol–gel reaction of Al(NO3)3∙9H2O as an alumina precursor in the presence of chitosan as a template. When the ammonia solution is added dropwise to the prepared viscose mixture containing chitosan, acetic acid, and the alumina precursor solution, the sol–gel condensation reaction of the alumina precursor occurs in the chitosan polymer metrics, resulting in bead-shaped chitosan-aluminum hydroxide particles. Then, final Bead-Shaped Mesoporous Alumina (BSMA) particles are obtained by calcination at a high temperature. During the synthesis, changing the mole ratio of the chitosan template to the alumina precursor allowed the particle diameter of the final bead sample to be finely controlled. In addition, the prepared BSMA particles have well-developed mesoporous characteristics with relatively large surface areas, which are beneficial for adsorption of gas molecules. In an ammonia adsorption experiment, the BSMA-1.5 sample, which has the smallest particle diameter among the bead samples, was the best in terms of adsorption capacity. In this manuscript, we systemically discuss the relationship between the characteristics of BSMA samples and their adsorption of ammonia.