an investigation on the adsorption behavior of a mesoporous silica synthesized by a surfactant-assisted method in an acidic media

Mesoporous sio2 nanopowder was synthesized under an acidic condition through a sol-gel method by use of cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (ctab) as the structure directing agent. also, the effects of the surfactant content (0, 0.5, and 1 g) were examined. the samples were investigated using the xrd, sem, fur, tem and n2 adsorption- desorption analyses. the results revealed that the sample containing 1 g ctab surfactant had the highest specific surface area of ~ 549 m².g^-1 , and showed the lowest values of 4.1 nm and 0.56 cm^3.g^-1 for pore size and pore volume,respectively. adsorption behavior of the mesoporous silica was investigated for the degradation of methylene blue pigments (mb) in aqueous solutions. the samples containing 0, 0.5 and 1 g ctab exhibited the maximum adsorption capacities of 333, 454 and 526 mg/g, respectively.