Short communicationIron oxide catalyst at the modified glass fiber support for selective oxidation of H2S

•Surface thermosynthesis was applied for supporting FeOx on glass fibers.•Support modification with external silica layer increases the content of FeOx.•Highly dispersed surface and subsurface FeOx particles (1-2 nm) are observed.•Isolated Fe3 + Oh cations are stabilized in the layers of SiO2 secondary support.•New catalyst activity exceeds the activity of conventional one by more than 10 times.

The novel iron-oxide based glass-fiber catalysts (GFC) for the H2S selective oxidation uses the support in form of the glass microfibrous fabric, premodified by external layer of secondary porous SiO2 support. The specific activity of FeOx-SiO2/GFC catalyst per unit mass of active component exceeds that of the similar conventional Fe2O3/Al2O3 catalyst by more than an order of magnitude due to the more dispersed state of active component in the GFC (1-2 nm compared to 15-30 nm in conventional catalyst). The proposed GFC also looks advantageous in terms of mass transfer efficiency and easy scale-up.

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