Facile synthesis of mesoporous kaolin catalyst carrier and its application in deep oxidative desulfurization

Natural kaolin clay with inherent structures shows huge potential for serving as catalytic carriers. Mesoporous kaolin carrier was obtained by a facile acidification and alkalization treatment, resulting in an extreme enhancement of specific surface area from 16.6 m 2 /g to 303.4 m 2 /g. The V 2 O 5 /mesoporous kaolin composite catalysts realized that nearly completely dibenzothiophene oxidative degraded within 10 min. This excellent catalytic performance should be attributed to the synergistic effect of mesoporous kaolin and well dispersed V 2 O 5 nanoparticles , which can expose more V 5+ /V 4+ Lewis acids and transfer bulky organic sulfides to active sites. The mechanism of oxidation desulfurization was proposed as: the V 2 O 5 active component react with tert-butyl hydroperoxide to form O .- , which oxidizes dibenzothiophene molecules on the active sites to form dibenzothiophene sulfone. The modifications of kaolin and its combination with V 2 O 5 demonstrated in this work are expected to open a new window for applying such abundant and cost-effective clay as catalytic carriers.