Chiang Mai Journal of Science

Porous alumina is always used as catalyst support in petrochemical field because the alumina has good thermal properties comparing with other ceramics. In this work, the synthesis of porous alumina by aluminium preformed sol and the controlling textural properties of alumina by using synthesized carbon template have also been studied. Firstly, aluminium acetylacetonate (A) has been dissolved with formaldehyde solution (F) to form aluminium preformed sol. Resorcinol-formaldehyde gel (RF-gel) has been also prepared by sol-gel processing as assisted-template to control morphology of alumina pore. The chemicals concentration to prepare the RF solution, aging time of both the preformed aluminium sol and the RF solution were fixed. After that, the RF solution was added into preformed aluminium sol. The sol-gel reaction was studied with the different aluminium acetylacetonate to formaldehyde (A/F) molar ratio and resorcinol (A/R) molar ratio. Finally, varying molar ratio of A/R and A/F changes textural properties of produced particles and obtains γ-phase alumina similarly. The highest surface area of synthesized alumina that can be reached is 221 m²/g.