Facile loading of CuCl on SBA-15 for adsorptive desulfurization

SBA-15 supported CuCl (CuCl/SBA-15) adsorbents were prepared with CuCl₂ as precursor via a facile ethylene reduction, where the reduction of CuCl₂ was carried out at temperatures ranging from 120 to 220 °C. The prepared adsorbents were characterized by X-ray diffraction, N₂ adsorption-desorption, Transmission electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The characterization reveals that the CuCl₂ supported on SBA-15 can be reduced to CuCl, and the ratio of Cu⁺ to the total copper amount increases with increasing the reduction temperature, reaching 85.7 % at 200 °C. The adsorption capacities of thiophene (TP), benzothiophene (BT) and dibenzothiophene (DBT) over the CuCl/SBA-15(x) were further tested at 30 °C, and the Langmuir equation was used to fit the adsorption isotherms. It shows that their adsorption capacities of desulfurization follow the order of CuCl/SBA-15(200) > CuCl/SBA-15(180) > CuCl/SBA-15(150) > CuCl/SBA-15(120) > CuCl/SBA-15(220). The CuCl/SBA-15 (200) outperforms the other samples, and its adsorption capacities are up to 40.83 mg S/g for TP, 56.10 mg S/g for BT, and 81.23 mg S/g for DBT, respectively. The regeneration experiments for CuCl/SBA-15(200) show that the desulfurization performance was still maintained after four adsorption-desorption cycles.