CHARACTERIZATION OF THE ACIDIC PROPERTIES OF ZEOLITES BY MEANS OF TEMPERATURE-PROGRAMMED DESORPTION (TPD) OF AMMONIA - CALCULATION OF DISTRIBUTION-FUNCTIONS OF THE DESORPTION ENERGY

Desorption energy distributions were calculated for temperature-programmed desorption (TPD) of ammonia from H zeolites of different type by means of regularization. This method does not require any limiting assumptions about the distribution function. It could be shown that the desorption energy distributions obtained are nearly independent of the experimental conditions and therefore they should represent a suitable measure for the distribution of the strength of acidic sites. The calculated desorption energy distributions for the ammonia desorption from the isolated bridging SiOHAl groups of H zeolites of different type significantly differ from each other in shape. The increase of the desorption energy of the main range of the distribution functions correlates well with the increase of the average acid strength of the SiOHAl groups with decreasing Al content of the zeolites.