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Supervisor(s): Xinwei Ye and Bert Weckhuysen
Title: The basicity of Akali-/Alkaline ion exchanged zeolites
Description: Solid base catalysts are widely applied in organic reactions such as alkylation, esterification and addition reactions. Zeolites are an attractive class of solid base catalyst because their properties are tunable in a simple manner. The basicity of akali-/alkaline ion exchanged zeolites originates from the framework oxygen, which is charge balanced by akali-/alkaline ions. In this bachelor thesis, akali-/alkaline ions including Na+, K+, Ca2+, Mg2+ as well as Ca2+ will be placed into large pore zeolites (zeolite Y, Mordenite). The bachelor student will learn to synthesize heterogeneous catalysts and use spectroscopic techniques with probe molecules to study basicity of heterogeneous catalysts.