Activity and deactivation of HDS catalysts: studying the active phase using CO AS a probe molecule

摘要

As we are moving to an environmentally responsible industry, fuel processing technology is becoming more and more important, Especially hydrodesulfurization (HDS) plays a major role today as the limits on sulfur content of gasoline and diesel fuel are decreasing continuously. Although the conventional NiMo and CoMo catalysts are widely used in commercial hydrotreaters for decades already, only little is known about the deactivation mechanism of these catalysts. Especially in the initial stages of the catalyst life, a substantial part of the activity is lost due to coke formation. One of the challenges in hydrotreating for chemical engineers is to predict and control coke formation in the early stage of process operation. In this work the initial deactivation of several HDS catalysts was studied by infrared spectroscopy using CO as a probe molecule (IR-CO). Up to now, only few researchers have used this powerful technique to study HDS catalysts.