Hydrothermal synthesis of Ni2P nanoparticle and its hydrodesulfurization of dibenzothiophene

Nanosized nickel phosphide (Ni 2 P) has been synthesized via hydrothermal reaction with environmental-friendly red phosphorus and nickel chloride. The reaction mechanism has been studied by measurement techniques of IC, XRD ,TEM, EDS, and XPS. The results showed that the particle sizes of as-prepared Ni 2 P are in nanoscale ranging from 10 to 30 nm. In hydrothermal reaction, red phosphorus reacts with water to its oxyacids, especially its hypophosphorous acid (or hypophosphite) which can reduce nickel chloride to nickel, and then metallic nickel will penetrate into the rest of red phosphorus to generate nano-Ni 2 P. Furthermore, the catalytic performance of as-synthesized Ni 2 P for the hydrodesulfurization of dibenzothiophene has been tested. It has been shown that the HDS reaction process over Ni 2 P catalyst agrees well with the pseudo-first order kinetic equation, and the HDS conversion can reach up to 43.83% in 5 h with a stable increasing catalytic activity during the whole examination process.