Sulfur elimination by ODSwith titanium-modified SBA-16.

Abstract

Over the past, oxidative desulfurization (ODS) has drawn considerable interest as a new alter-native method for deep sulfur elimination from light oils. This can be attributed to its attractive properties, including lower temperature and pressure conditions and lower operating cost than conventional hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process. Oxidation of organosulfur compounds results in the formation of sulfoxides/sulfones, highly polar and hence easily removed by both extraction into polar solvents or by adsorption. Due to their low reactivity, dibenzothiophene derivatives (DBTs) are the most refractory species to be eliminated from oils. Hence, the ODS process through which DBTs are converted to their corresponding sulfones involves great interest at present. In this work, we describe the preparation and characterization of new mesoporous catalytic materials based on Ti-containing SBA-16. We study here, the effect of the preparation method of titania-modified SBA-16 (characteristics of the active Ti and/or TiO2 species) and the effect of the different operation conditions in ODS of DBT under mild conditions in order to find the best performance. TiO2-modified mesoporous SBA-16 and titanium-substituted mesoporous SBA-16 were developed and tested in the oxidative desulfurization (ODS) of dibenzothiophene prevailing in liquid fuel. We assessed the impact exerted on performance of different reaction variables, including (nature and amount of the active catalytic species, phase system, molar ratio of oxidant H2O2 and DBT, reaction temperature, nature of the substrate and reuse of catalysts). We achieved 90% of S removal from a 0.2 wt.% dibenzothiophene solution at 60°C in less than 1 h of reaction. The best catalytic results are obtained with high exposed surface of nanometric TiO2 species of TiO2/SBA-16 sample. The activated catalyst is very active in ODS reaction and can be reused four times with no loss in activity