Microporous crystalline material, zeolite ITQ-37, preparation method and use

#This application is a U.S. national phase application under 35 U.S.C. §371 of International Patent Application No. PCT/ES2007/070036 filed Feb. 22, 2007, which claims the benefit of priority to Spanish Patent Application No. P200600584 filed Feb. 28, 2006, the disclosures of all of which are hereby incorporated by reference in their entireties. The International Application was published in Spanish on Sep. 7, 2007 as WO/2007/099190.

#The present application relates to a novel microporous crystalline material, ITQ-37, to its method of preparation and its use in the catalytic conversion of organic compounds.

#Zeolites are porous crystalline aluminosilicates which have found important applications as catalysts, adsorbents and ion exchangers. Many of these zeolitic materials have well-defined structures which form channels and cavities in their interior of uniform size and shape which permit the absorption of certain molecules, whilst they permit the passage to the inside of the crystal of other molecules of a too large size to be diffused through the pores. This characteristic gives these materials molecular screen properties. These molecular screens may include Si and other elements of the IIIA group of the periodic table, all tetrahedrically coordinated, the tetrahedrons being bound by their vertices through oxygens forming a three-dimensional network. The negative charge generated by the elements of the IIIA group in network positions is compensated by the presence in the crystal of cations, such as for example, alkalines or earth alkalines. A type of cation may be totally or partially exchanged by another type of cation by ion exchange techniques, thus being able to vary the properties of a given silicate by selecting the desired cations.

#The present invention relates to a new microporous crystalline material, ITQ-37, which has a chemical composition in the calcined state represented by the formula: xX2O3:nYO2:mGeO2 wherein (n+m) is at least 5, X is one or more trivalent elements, Y corresponds to one or several tetravalent elements other than Ge, and the Y/Ge ratio is greater than 0.1, “x” may take any value, including zero, and has an X-ray diffraction pattern whose main lines for its uncalcined synthesized form are:

#(d ± 0.2) (Å) Relative intensity 18.787 vs 15.339 f 11.882 vw 8.856 vw 8.402 vw 8.011 vw 7.670 vw 5.210 vw 3.757 vw 3.720 vw 3.321 vw 2.970 vw 2.670 vw wherein (vs) signifies relative intensity 80-100, “w” signifies relative intensity 20-40 and “vw” signifies relative intensity 0-20, calculated as the percentage with respect to the most intense peak.

#This novel material, called ITQ-37, both in its calcined state and uncalcined synthesized state has an X-ray diffraction pattern which is different to the other zeolitic materials and whose most important diffraction lines are given in table 1 for the calcined state.