Narrowing Surface Aperture to Promote Adsorption and Selectivity of p‐Cresol and m‐Cresol Over the Short b‐Axis ZSM‐5

ABSTRACT m ‐Cresol and p ‐cresol cannot be effectively separated using conventional distillation because of their proximate boiling temperatures. This study investigated the adsorption separation of cresol using the short b ‐axis ZSM‐5 synthesized via a urea‐assisted method. In contrast to the ellipsoidal HZSM‐5, which was approximately 1 μm in length, the thickness of the sheet‐like HZSM‐5 decreased to 36 nm, resulting in an increase in total cresol adsorption capacity from 76 to 122 mg/g. Applying the CLD method, an increase in the TEOS:HZSM‐5 ratio from 0 to 0.83 resulted in the increase in p ‐cresol adsorption capacity from 69 to 106 mg/g, while m ‐cresol adsorption capacity dropped from 53 to 12 mg/g. The adsorption selectivity significantly rose from 1.3 to 9.7. The adsorption kinetics and isotherms demonstrated that the process was exothermic for p ‐cresol and endothermic for m ‐cresol.