Breakthrough performances of metal-exchanged nanotitanate ETS-2 adsorbents for room temperature desulfurization

Engelhard titanosilicate-2 (ETS-2) has shown to be a promising substrate to load active sites for deep H2S removal (to sub-ppm levels) for gas purification applications at room temperature. Because of the high external surface area and the cation exchange capacity of ETS-2, active sites can be highly dispersed and very accessible to H2S molecules making it a novel support material for metal-oxide H2S adsorbents. In this paper, we report the room temperature H2S breakthrough performances of ETS-2 metal exchanged with Ag, Ca, Cu and Zn in comparison to a fully developed commercial H2S adsorbent (R3-11G, 36 wt% CuO, BASF). The results indicate the following trend for H2S uptake capacities at room temperature: Cu-ETS-2>Ag-ETS-2>Zn-ETS-2≈R3-11G>Ca-ETS-2≈Na-ETS-2. Cu exchanged ETS-2 displays the highest H2S capacity of 29.7 mg H2S/g adsorbent compared to the other investigated materials, making it the most promising metal-exchanged ETS-2 for room temperature desulfurization.