Intraparticle ripening to create hierarchically porous Ti-MOF single crystals for deep oxidative desulfurization?

Dalton Transactions Pub Date: 2023-08-09 DOI: 10.1039/D3DT01731A

Abstract

The catalytic oxidative desulfurization (ODS) technique is able to remove sulfur compounds from fuels, conducive to achieving deep desulfurization for the good of the ecological environment. Ti-based metal–organic frameworks (Ti-MOFs) possessing good affinity to organic reactants and considerable numbers of Ti active sites are promising catalysts for ODS. However, current Ti-MOFs suffer from severe diffusion limitations caused by the size mismatch between sole micropores and bulky sulfur compounds, leading to poor ODS performance. Here, a facile method of intraparticle ripening without any additive is developed to obtain hierarchically meso–microporous Ti-MIL-125 single crystals (Meso-Ti-MIL-125) for the first time. Such Meso-Ti-MIL-125 shows a BET surface area of 1401 m2 g?1 and a mesoporous volume that is 1.7 times as high as that of the conventional Ti-MIL-125. Our novel Meso-Ti-MIL-125 exhibits excellent catalytic performance in the ODS of a series of bulky thiophenic sulfur compounds, completely removing benzothiophene (BT), dibenzothiophene (DBT), and 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene (DMDBT) from model fuels, which is, respectively, 2.4 times, 1.5 times, and 6.7 times higher than the removal achieved with conventional Ti-MIL-125. Such a facile synthetic strategy is envisioned to be applied in many kinds of crystalline materials, such as zeolites, for industrial production.

Graphical abstract: Intraparticle ripening to create hierarchically porous Ti-MOF single crystals for deep oxidative desulfurization
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