Iron-modified mesoporous materials as catalysts for ODS of sulfur compounds.

Abstract

Mandatory environmental regulations have been legislated all over the world so the top permitted content of sulfur in diesel is 15 ppm. ODS is the oxidation of sulfur compounds present in diesel to form sulfoxides and sulfones. These substances are highly polar and hence easily removed by extraction with solvent. Oxidant agent commonly used are peroxides such as hydrogen peroxide and tert-butylhydroperoxide (Di Giusepe et al., 2009). Since Diesel is a non-polar liquid while H2O2 is a polar liquid, a polar solvent is needed. The formed polar products can be easily removed from the operation unit by liquid liquid extraction. Mesoporous materials have been tried showing potential catalytic applications. Transition metals are commonly used as catalyst in ODS such as Mo, Mn, Sn, Fe, Zn, V and Ti (Cedeño-Caero et al., 2011). In this work, we propose the application of different supports as SBA-15, MCM-48, CMK-1 and CMK-3 for the preparation of Fe-catalysts.