Synthesis of Cu-BTC/Mt composites porous materials and their performance in adsorptive desulfurization process

Abstract This paper highlights the synthesis of Cu-BTC supported on Montmorillonite (Mt) to form Cu-BTC/Mt composite materials and examines their important role in adsorptive desulfurization process of fuel liquids. Cu-BTC/Mt composites were synthesized by solvothermal synthesis using varying Cu-BTC content (30%, 40% and 50%) and a well-known and constant amount of montmorillonite was used as support. The synthesized composites were then characterized using XRD, FT-IR, TEM and BET techniques. The adsorptive desulfurization performance of the as-prepared composite materials was investigated and their ability to remove thiophene from thiophene/n-octane model oil was studied under mild operating conditions namely: temperature near room temperature, atmospheric pressure and at different model oil/adsorbent mass ratio. Investigation results have shown that the 40%Cu-BTC/Mt composite sample has the best desulfurization performance for thiophene removal. After 6 h of desulfurization, under the reaction conditions of temperature of 30 °C and at a model oil/adsorbent mass ratio of 100:1, the percentage of sulfur removal was 76% while the adsorption desulfurization capacity reached 28.95 mgS/gMOF. The 40%Cu-BTC/Mt composite sample could be reused for at least five consecutive rounds. The adsorption kinetics fit well both the pseudo-first order rate equation and pseudo-second order rate equation models.