Ultrafast synthesis of hierarchical Mo-Beta zeolites by structural reconstruction for efficient oxidative desulfurization

Creating highly active Mo-incorporated zeolites for catalytic applications remains a significant challenge in materials synthesis. Traditional hydrothermal methods often struggle to balance rapid crystallization with effective Mo incorporation and control over the resulting material's porosity. This work introduces a novel synthetic strategy based on rapid structural reconstruction to produce high-performance Mo-Beta zeolites. Full crystallinity is achieved in just 3 h at 140 °C, a significant improvement over the conventional approaches. The resulting Mo-Beta materials feature a hierarchical micro- and mesoporous architecture and a tunable Si/Mo ratio (53–202), allowing for optimized catalytic performance. These zeolites demonstrate exceptional activity in the oxidative desulfurization of dibenzothiophene, accomplishing a remarkable mass-specific activity (1.50 h –1 ) and turnover frequency (20.8 h –1 ) under the optimized reaction conditions (10 mL model oil; DBT concentration of 500 μg mL –1 ; H 2 O 2 /DBT = 3; 45 mg catalyst; 60 °C). These metrics significantly exceed those reported for many other heteroatom-containing zeolite catalysts. Moreover, the synthesized Mo-Beta catalyst exhibits excellent stability at the reaction time of 1 h. However, slight activity loss is observed at a short reaction time of 0.25 h after five reaction runs and the catalytic activity can be regenerated by calcination. This rapid structural reconstruction method offers a promising new route for the efficient synthesis of advanced Mo-zeolites and highlights their potential for sustainable catalytic applications.