Development of the crystallinity model and investigation of the effective factors on the crystallinity of zeolite Y using the response surface method

In this study, zeolite Y was synthesized from sodium silicate, aluminum hydroxide, sodium hydroxide and distilled water under hydrothermal method. The Box–Behnken design was used as a response surface method considering seven factors affecting the crystallization of zeolite to determine the number of experiments. The linear, square and interaction effects of the factors were investigated. The factors consist of four factors for the gel composition, including the molar value of Si, Al, Na and H₂O and three factors for the synthesis conditions, including aging time, crystallization time and temperature. The XRD patterns of the synthesized samples were compared with the XRD pattern of standard zeolite Y. Among the samples, sample 50 with the highest intensity and maximum total area of 14 peaks, was selected as the reference sample and it was used to determine the relative crystallinity percentage of the remaining samples. Based on the results of the experiments, it was concluded that changes in the gel composition have a more significant effect on the response in comparison with changes in the synthesis conditions. In addition, optimization of the obtained model was carried out and a zeolite with higher relative crystallinity than the standard zeolite Y was synthesized. At the optimal point, zeolite Y was synthesized with a relative crystallinity of 117.5%. The composition of the gel was 0.59 SiO₂: 0.0563 Al₂O₃: 0.4266 Na₂O: 12.376 H₂O. The total synthesis time was 30 h.