Natural porous carbon/ Molybdenum oxide as an efficient catalyst in oxidative desulfurization

As the sulphur compounds in fuel and petrochemicals have harmful effect on our health and the environment, the removal of them has attracted a considerable attention these days [1]. So, desulfurization has become a critical component of the oil refining industries. A lot of techniques such as hydrodesulfurization (HDS), biodesulfurization (BDS), adsorption (ADS) and oxidative desulfurization (ODS) have been applied to remove sulfur-containing compounds in fuel oil. Among these methods, the advantages of ODS process is its milder condition (low temperature and pressure), higher selectivity and not using expensive hydrogen [2-6]In this research we prepared a natural porous carbon from luffa and then MoO3 as an active material was supported on it to evaluate its catalytic properties in ODS reaction. Luffa is a tropical plant (family Cucurbitaceae), with fruits possessing a netting-like fibrousvascular system (Luffa sponges). It was selected due to its hierarchical pore network and complex micro-/macrostructure, whichmight be particularly suitable for technical applications such as catalysis and separation.Synthesized catalyst was characterized by a number of techniques such as SEM, EDAX, XRD, BET/ BJH and FTIR and tested in oxidative desulfurization of model fuel. Results show that C/ MoO3 catalyst indicate an excellent property in catalytic desulfurization.

Keywords:

porous carbon , Luffa , Molybdenum oxide , oxidative desulfurization (ODS)