High-Oxidative Desulfurization of Fuels Catalyzed by Encapsulation of Tetranuclear Sandwich-Type Polyoxometalate on Hierarchical Ni-MOF
Mohammad Ali Rezvani, Hadi Hassani Ardeshiri, Hossein Ghafuri, Nasrin Khalafi
Abstract
Efforts to reduce sulfur content in transportation fuels have intensified due to the harmful environmental effects of sulfur emissions. Oxidative desulfurization (ODS) has been as a useful method for removing sulfur from fuels under mild operating conditions. Herein, nanocomposite FWF@NMF was synthesized via the supporting of Fe 6 W 18 O 70 (denoted as FWF) in the scaffold of Ni-MOF (NMF). Various techniques were employed to investigate the characteristics of the FWF@NMF nanocomposite, including Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Ultraviolet–Visible (UV–vis), Energy-Dispersive X-ray (EDX), and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) analyses. These methods confirmed the successful synthesis of the nanocomposite and provided detailed insights into its structural and morphological properties. The FWF@NMF inorganic–organic hybrid composite was then applied in the ODS process for both real/model gasoline, using a combination of H 2 O 2 and acetic acid (H 2 O 2 /AcOH) as an oxidizing agent. The results demonstrated that the FWF@NMF nanocatalyst exhibited a remarkable desulfurization efficiency, achieving sulfur removal of up to 98% with 0.10 g of catalyst at 35 °C for 60 min. Further, it was noted that a significant decrease in the total sulfur concentration in gasoline was observed, decreasing from 0.4995 to 0.0115 wt %. Furthermore, the FWF@NMF nanocatalyst exhibited excellent recyclability and maintained its activity without significant loss of performance over five consecutive cycles.