Abstracts Book - IMRC 2018

• SF3-P024
DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHLY-ACTIVE SUPPORTED NiW CATALYSTS
FOR DEEP HYDRODESULFURIZATION
Tatiana Klimova 1 , Rodrigo Arturo Ortega Domínguez 1 , Carlos Gustavo Gutiérrez Juárez 1 , Xim
Bokhimi 2
1 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Facultad de Química, Mexico. 2 Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Física, Mexico.
The hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process is an efficient method for sulfur removal
gasoline and diesel fractions of petroleum. Environmental legislation in many
countries calls for the production and use of more environmentally friendly fuels
with ultra low sulfur content. Since it is impossible to achieve deep
hydrodesulfurization of fuels using classical Co(Ni)Mo(W)/Al 2 O 3 sulfide
catalysts, it is urgent to develop new catalysts with improved catalytic
performance, especially for the elimination of low reactivity sulfur compounds.
In our group, a comparison study of NiMo and NiW catalysts supported on γ-
Al 2 O 3 was performed. The NiMo catalyst was more active in HDS than the
corresponding NiW analog, but its activity decreased in presence of a small
amount of naphthalene in the reaction mixture, whereas the NiW/γ-Al 2 O 3
maintained its activity intact. This showed that the NiW active phase has an
advantage of being more resistant to the presence of aromatics, which is
important for the hydrotreatment of real gas oil fractions with high aromatic
contents. However, it is still necessary to find an appropriate support for the
NiW catalysts, able to improve their intrinsic catalytic activity in comparison with
the alumina-supported counterparts. Attending this demand, different
materials have been tested as supports for HDS catalysts. Titania has attracted
special attention, since TiO 2 -supported Mo catalysts show higher intrinsic HDS
activity than the alumina-supported counterparts.
In the present work, a series of NiW catalysts supported on different
nanostructured materials were prepared and tested in HDS of
dibenzothiophene (DBT) and 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene (4,6-DMDBT). Our
interest was to inquire into the effect of the support’s nature and its textural and
structural characteristics on the activity of the supported NiW catalysts in deep
HDS. Among the tested supports were SBA-15, Ti-SBA-15, Zr-SBA-15,
nanostructured titania and γ-Al 2 O 3 used as a reference. Supports and NiW
catalysts were characterized by nitrogen physisorption, small-angle and powder
XRD, TPR, UV-vis DRS, SEM-EDX, HRTEM, and tested in HDS of dibenzothiophene