Synthesis, characterization and catalytic performance of meso-microporous material Beta-SBA-15-supported NiMo catalysts for hydrodesulfurization of dibenzothiophene

Micro-mesoporous composite material Beta-SBA-15 (BS) with the Beta structure and SBA-15 mesoporous structure was synthesized and used as catalyst support for hydrodesulfurization (HDS) of dibenzothiophene (DBT). The supports and catalysts were characterized by various techniques including XRD, nitrogen adsorption, SEM, TEM, 27Al MAS NMR, and Pyridine-FTIR. The characterization results demonstrated that NiMo/BS had similar acidity to NiMo/Beta, and possessed more acid sites and stronger acidity than NiMo/SBA-15 and NiMo/Al2O3. Activity evaluation results showed that NiMo/BS exhibited the highest DBT HDS activity among all the catalysts that were studied, and the DBT conversion on NiMo/BS was about 1.6 times as much as that on NiMo/Al2O3 at weight time of 0.75 g min mol−1. The better catalytic performance of NiMo/BS was attributed to the superiorities of the pore structure and large amounts of acid sites of micro-mesoporous BS.