LAUSR

Abstract Mesoporous ZnO–Al 2 O 3 mixed oxides (MO) were synthesized by double hydrolysis method at different temperatures and used as the support for the preparation of Ni/MO adsorbents. The reactive adsorption desulfurization (RADS) performance of adsorbents was evaluated in a fixed bed microreactor using thiophene as a model compound. The adsorbents before and after RADS were characterized by X-ray diffraction, N 2 adsorption/desorption, thermogravimetric analysis, Fourier transformed infrared spectrometry and transmission electron microscopy techniques. Results show that Ni/MO samples exhibited much higher RADS activity and larger accumulative sulfur capacity than sample NZA-K prepared using the conventional kneading method. The desulfurization activity of Ni/MO adsorbents decreased with increasing the crystallization temperature of MO. As a result, sample Ni/ZnO–Al 2 O 3 -60 °C synthesized at 60 °C showed the best desulfurization performance among all Ni/MO adsorbents. Detailed characterization results revealed that the high dispersion of NiO and ZnO, the absence of inactive NiAl 2 O 4 and high concentration of surface Lewis acid sites may account for the superior RADS performance of Ni/MOs samples. Furthermore, based on the experimental results, a mechanism is proposed for the RADS process with Ni/MO adsorbents.