Deep HDS of FCC gasoline over alumina supported CoMoS catalyst: Inhibiting effects of carbon monoxide and water

• Weak decrease of the HDS and HYD activity of the gasoline model feed in the presence of water, and partially irreversible.
• Main inhibiting effect induced by CO rather than water, but completely reversible.
• Higher adsorption energy of CO than water quantified by DFT calculations.

The selective hydrodesulfurization (HDS) of FCC gasoline is a key catalytic process for reducing sulfur content in gasoline. In the present work, we focus on the effect of H2O amount alone or in mixture with CO on the transformation of a model FCC gasoline composed of 2-methylthiophene (2MT) and 2,3-dimethylbut-2-ene (23DMB2N) molecules, over an alumina supported CoMoS catalyst. A negative impact of water and CO on the conversion of 2MT and 23DMB2N is found. However the effect in the presence of CO is much stronger. The comparison of Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations of CO and water adsorption on the S- and M-edge sites of the CoMoS slabs shows a significantly stronger CO adsorption energy than water adsorption energy. When CO and water were introduced simultaneously, the negative impact observed in the transformation of the model feed is mainly due only to the presence of CO. However whatever the oxygenated molecules used and their amount, no impact in the selectivity measured by the ratio between the activity in hydrodesulfurization and in hydrogenation is observed.

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