In this work, the catalytic activity of ternary Co-Mo-W/Al-SBA-16 systems was investigated in the reaction of hydrodesulfurization (HDS) of dibenzothiophene (DBT) performed in a batch reactor at 350 °C and total H2 pressure of 33.8 bar. The synthetized materials were characterized by a variety of techniques (chemical analysis, N2 adsorption¿desorption isotherms, XRD, TPR, TPD-NH3, FTIR of adsorbed pyridine, DRS-UV-vis, HRTEM and XPS). By applying the direct synthesis method, high surface area substrates with Al3+ incorporated in the lattice and a small quantity of Brønsted acid sites were obtained. The activity results indicate that all CoMoW/Al-SBA-16 catalysts were active in the HDS of DBT, the largest activity was found in the catalyst with the highest Al-content. This behavior was explained in terms of its largest specific area, good dispersion of the metal sulfide phases having average size of 3.3 nm and the presence of small amount of Brønsted acid sites. All catalysts showed a high selectivity towards biphenyl indicating that HDS of DBT reaction proceeds mainly on the metal sites via direct desulfurization (DDS) reaction pathway.

Trabajo presentado en el International Mexican Congress on Chemical Reaction Engineering, celebrado en Acapulco (México) del 07 al 13 de junio de 2014.

Peer Reviewed