Facile Fabrication of Cuprous Oxide-based Adsorbents for Deep Desulfurization

Abstract

Deep desulfurization via π-complexation adsorption is an effective approach for the selective capture of aromatic sulfur compounds. Among various π-complexation adsorbents, Cu(I)-containing materials attract great attention due to their low cost and high efficiency. In the present study, a one-pot thermal treatment strategy was developed to fabricate Cu2O-based adsorbents for the first time. As-synthesized mesoporous silica SBA-15 was directly used as the support and the precursor Cu(NO3)2 was introduced to the confined space between silica walls and template. The subsequent one-pot thermal treatment plays a triple role by decomposing Cu(NO3)2 to CuO, removing the template P123, and reducing CuO to Cu2O. In contrast to the traditional approach, our strategy provides a more convenient method for the preparation of Cu2O-based adsorbents. For a typical material CuAS-3 derived from as-synthesized SBA-15, the yield of Cu(I) is 73.3%, which is obviously higher than its counterpart CuCS-3 prepared from template-...