Study On Preparation、Modification And Adsorption Desulfurization Performance Of Kaolin Nanotubes

Since carbon nanotubes were discovered in1991, tubular nanomaterials havebeen hot spot and widely used in many research fields, such as composite materials,hydrogen storage materials, electronic devices, catalyst supports and so on. During tolow price and good biocompatibility compared with other types of tubularnanomaterials, natural tubular kaolin—halloysite nanotubes are usually used as drugrelease carriers, biomimetic smart materials, nano-reactors and so on. However,reserves of natural tubular kaolin are limited, while reserves of layered coal serieskaolin with low utilization are huge in our country. Therefore, it is important toconvert layered coal series kaolin into tubular kaolin with high utilization.Our research team found a new type of tubular kaolin in the process of preparingnatural tubular kaolin-halloysites, which are different from natural halloysitenanotubes and we named it “kaolin nanotubes”. Although we made some preliminaryexploration about their performance, but there have been not systematic researches ontheir structure and performance. Therefore, we repeat the experiment to preparingkaolin nanotubes based on coal series kaolin, study the effects of preparation andprocessing conditions on the products, and inspect their adsorption desulfurizationperformance systematically so that we can provide references for applications ofkaolin nanotubes in adsorption desulfurization field.It is found that the prepared kaolin nanotubes through intercalation have goodhomogeneity and big length-diameter ratio, while their inside diameters vary from4to27nm, widths vary from0.1to0.5μm. What’s more, kaolin nanotubes have goodstability under high temperature and acidic environment and poor stability in alkalineenvironment. The adsorption desulfurization test shows that the desulfurization rate ofkaolin nanotubes is40.5%before modification and it is improved after modification.The desulfurization rates of kaolin nanotubes with surfactant, high temperature andacid modification grows by19.8%,10.8%and11.9%, while it gets the biggestgrowth by21%with calcination and metal oxide modification.