Kinetic study of the deep hydrodesulfurization of dibenzothiophene over molybdenum carbide supported on a carbon black composite: Existence of two types of active sites

Hydrodesulfurization (HDS) is part of the hydrotreating process, which is an ensemble of several reactions (HDN, HDO, HDS, etc.) taking place simultaneously at the industrial scale. Only sulfur is currently submitted to drastic Europeans specifications and conventional commercial catalysts cannot reach the specifications at low cost. This paper presents the behavior of a potential substitute catalyst tested for the deep HDS of a model molecule such as the dibenzothiophene (DBT). The substitute is molybdenum carbide supported on a mesoporous carbon black composite of surface area 240 m2 g−1. A global kinetic study of the deep HDS of DBT (300 ppm S) was performed at 623 K and 5.0 MPa and a global kinetic model was proposed as well as global rate constants were calculated to obtain theoretical plots of concentration versus contact time to compare with the experimental data. The kinetic model and global kinetic orders were confirmed as an acceptable correlation was found between calculated and experimental data. Furthermore, the determination of the global kinetic orders indicated that two types of active sites must be present on the surface in order to explain the observed results.