부산대학교 도서관

The environmental impact associated with sand waste disposal in the oil/gas exploration and production process is one of the most crucial perspectives for sustainable development. In this contribution, we report the alternative concept for the transformation of production sand waste to various types of zeolites including Faujasite (FAU) and Linde Type A (LTA). At the first step of material preparation, nano-silica was extracted selectively from waste sand via a sol–gel hydrothermal method, eventually producing high purity silica with the silica content above 98 wt.%. Subsequently, the obtained nano-silica was converted efficiently to several zeolite frameworks including FAU and LTA via a simple hydrothermal process with the seed-assisted synthesis approach. The effect of hydrothermal crystallization time, starting Si/Al ratio, stirring rate, and hydrothermal temperature on the zeolite formation was studied systematically. To illustrate the beneficial aspect of the synthesized zeolites, the synthesized samples were applied as adsorbents for selective moisture adsorption in the presence of simulated hydrocarbons or air and catalysts for ethanol conversion. The results show that the synthesized FAU exhibits an excellent performance in the selective water adsorption in the presence of hydrocarbons/air with a high adsorption capacity of 0.0044 g of water per 1 g of catalyst. In addition, the catalytic performance of the synthesized acid FAU derived from production sand exhibited a promising potential for ethanol dehydration, resulting in ethanol conversion of 37% and ethylene selectivity of 13.8%. These findings open up the perspective of the development of adsorbents and catalysts using production sand waste as a raw material, which is a very useful scheme for the oil and gas industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]