Preparation and Characterization of Microfiber Impregnated Reinforced Alumina Supported ZnO Catalyst

摘要

Sulfur removal from refinery streams becoming more challenging due to the stringent environmental regulations. Among several technologies, reactive adsorption is a desulfurization technique that can be applied to remove the last ppm sulfur from fuels. For this purpose, a kind of microfiber impregnated alumina supported ZnO catalysts were prepared by incipient wetness impregnation (IWI) technique followed by sintering in air at 450-500 C. 8- micrometer diameter E-type glass and silica fibers were utilized to entrap porous Al2O3 support particulates. Zinc oxide (ZnO), a most active component to remove sulfur species, was then dispersed on the Al2O3 pore surface at room temperature using Zn(NO3)2 aqueous solutions as a precursor. The resulting microfibrous catalysts took advantage of high void volume, heat/mass transfer, surface area, permeability, contacting efficiency etc. The structure and the morphology of the porous materials were characterized by XRD, SEM/EDS, EDAX, XPS, N2 Adsorption-desorption. The physicochemical properties of the microfibrous ZnO/Al2O3 catalysts were juxtaposed with traditional ZnO/Al2O3 catalysts of similar compositions. Compared between microfibrous catalyst and reference catalyst, the surface areas were increased by 19.5% and the pore structure became more uniform in same size range.