Oxidative desulfurization of diesel fuel using amphiphilic quaternary ammonium phosphomolybdate catalysts

Phosphomolybdic acid (HPMo) modified respectively with tetramethyl ammonium chloride (TMAC), dodecyl trimethyl ammonium chloride (DTAC) and hexadecyl trimethyl ammonium chloride (HTAC) as the catalysts were prepared and characterized by FT-IR, XRD and SEM. The catalysts were evaluated for the oxidative desulfurization of benzothiophene (BT), dibenzothiophene (DBT) and straight-run diesel using hydrogen peroxide as an oxidant. Results show that all of the catalysts keep the Keggin structures and are finely dispersed with mixing of quaternary ammonium salts. Hexadecyl chains are more favorable to wrap up DBT to the catalytic center and form stable emulsion system with higher conversion rates of DBT. The shorter dodecyl chains can wrap up BT more suitably and bring smaller steric hindrance, which display higher conversion rates of BT. The oxidative reactions fit apparent first-order kinetics, and the apparent activation energies of DBT are much lower than those of BT. The desulfurization rate of straight-run diesel can be up to 84.4% with the recovery rate of 98.1% catalyzed by [HPMo][HTAC]2 in 2 h. When increasing the extraction times, the desulfurization rates increase, but the recovery rates of diesel decrease significantly.