Preparation of synthetic composite nano-catalyst for oxidative desulfurization of kerosene

Abstract

ABSTRACT The production of transportation fuels with low sulfur concentrations has been a special priority for the petroleum refining industry as a result of increasing environmental standards imposed by governments around the world. The oxidative desulfurization of kerosene with a sulfur concentration of 1158 ppm has been thoroughly investigated in this research, using two types of synthesized nanocatalysts (CuO/SiO2, CuO/TiO2-SiO2). A variety of characterization tests were performed on the support and the produced catalyst, including scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray analysis, X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller. These findings demonstrated that the catalysts had a strong metal-support interaction, good dispersion of the active metal (Cu), and a wide range of surface morphologies. An automatic batch reactor is used for the oxidative desulfurization of sulfur organic compounds, and the efficacy of the synthesized nano-catalyst is measured in terms of sulfur removal under different moderate reaction conditions (reaction temperature 353–413 K, reaction time 40–100 min). Significant surface area and pore volume active metals were distributed with proper dispersion, resulting in high activity and conversion rates of 87% for CAT-1 and 99.2% for CAT-2 at 413K and 100 min.