3. Results and discussion
3.1
Characterization of
zeolites
Fig. 1 showed the powder X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) patterns of various MEL
zeolite samples, it was observed that all the synthesized samples
exhibited the characteristic peaks (such as 2θ = 7.9o,
8.8o, 14.8o, 23.1oand 23.9o) of MEL topologic
framework,23,24indicating that the MEL zeolites were successfully fabricated in present
work. No other detectable diffraction peaks for metal phases, such as
large iron oxides, were found, which meant the substantial absence of
large metal crystallites. In addition, the EDX mapping (Fig. 2a) further
demonstrated that the immobilized Fe species were homogeneously
distributed throughout the whole MEL zeolite particle.