Oxidative desulfurization of thiophene on TiO2/ZSM-12 zeolite

Abstract

In this work the hydrothermal synthesis of ZSM-12 zeolite was performed, varying the MTEACl/SiO2 ratio, where the synthesis temperature was 140 ºC and the crystallization time was 144 hours. The catalysts were characterized by XRD, FTIR and TG. TiO2/ZSM-12 catalysts were used with titanium ions concentrations of 5, 10 and 15%. The oxidative desulfurization (ODS) reactions were performed using a model mixture containing n-heptane as solvent and thiophene as sulfur compound, H2O2 as an oxidizing agent, and acetonitrile as an extractor solvent at reaction temperatures of 30, 50 and 70 ºC. The obtained results shows that TiO2/ZSM-12 with 15% of Ti catalyst has a better performance in the ODS reaction converting thiophene at about 60%.

Keywords

• Desulfurizaton
• ZSM-12 zeolite
• Oxidation