Desulfurization of thiophene by electrochemical perturbation

Abstract

The exploitation of an electrochemical perturbation for the destruction of a sulfur-containing organic compound to produce harmless inorganic compounds has been investigated. The model sulfur-containing compound in the present work is thiophene and the electrochemical perturbation is a square wave potential program. The adsorption behavior of thiophene was investigated where maximum coverage of thiophene was found to fall within the double- layer region at 0.2 V. The parameters of the square wave were a lower potential of E 1 = −0.2 V, an upper potential of E u = 1.3 V, and an optimal frequency of 50 Hz which compromises the number of potential cycles per unit time with the efficiency of desulfurization per potential cycle.