Oxidative removal of dibenzothiophene from a model fuel using nanocrystalline Ti-beta catalyst

Dibenzothiophene (DBT) was oxidised by hydrogen peroxide in a batch operation using nano-crystalline Ti-beta catalyst. The catalyst was prepared and characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM and BET surface area analysis. The parametric studies of the reaction, effects of stirrer speed, catalyst concentration, initial DBT concentration, oxidant to substrate mole ratio and temperature were investigated. The kinetic study emphasised on the analysis of Langmuir Hinshelwood type rate model in the present work. Three rate models based on adsorption, dual site surface reaction and single site Eley-Riedel mechanism were compared by fitting with the experimental data and the surface reaction controlled rate model was found to be the appropriate one. The activation energy of reaction was obtained as 46.03 kJ/mol.