Synthesis and Improvement of the ZSM-11 Zeolite Characteristics with Transition Metals for Its Catalytic Application in Oxidative Desulfurization

ZSM-11 Zeolite was successfully synthesized using a seed-assisted method and a proposed template of N,N-diethylaniline. In addition, the effect of the silicon-to-aluminum ratio was investigated for seeds and the optimum ratio of 10 was obtained. Synthesized zeolites were identified using FT-IR, EDX, SEM, BET, and XRD techniques. Synthesized zeolite as a heterogeneous catalyst in the oxidative desulfurization process was used for the fuels model including n-heptane and dibenzothiophene. In order to obtain optimal reaction conditions, the effect of temperature and amount of catalyst was studied and a temperature of 100 and amount of 0.05g was chosen as optimum temperature and amount of catalyst and the effect of time in optimal conditions were investigated for different catalysts. The percentage of conversion of dibenzothiophene ion exchangeable zeolites with different intermediate metals such as molybdenum, vanadium, lanthanum, cobalt, copper, and cerium was calculated by gas chromatography and compared with each other. The results show that the Mo/ZSM-11 catalyst has high oxidation activity in comparison with other catalysts in the oxidative desulfurization reaction.