Oxidative desulfurization of a model fuel using ozone oxidation generated by dielectric barrier discharge plasma combined with Co3O4/gamma-Al2O3 catalysis

The oxidative desulfurization (ODS) method is a highly promising method for deep desulfurization. However, the oxidant used most often in ODS is hydrogen peroxide, which can decompose into water and form an oil-water biphasic system, which affects fuel quality and confers difficulty in recovering the oil phase. If a gas is used as an oxidizing agent in ODS, oil-water biphasic problems would not exist. In this study, we synthesized the metal oxide Co3O4/gamma-Al2O3 as a catalyst by a two-solvent, impregnation, and adsorption method, producing ozone as an oxidant by the dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma technology, and prepared a model fuel by dissolving representative sulfur compounds such as thiophene (T), benzothiophene (BT), dibenzothiophene (DBT) and 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene (4,6-DMDBT) in n-octane. Then, a novel room temperature catalytic oxidative desulfurization method through ozone oxidation combined with Co3O4/gamma-Al2O3 catalysis was developed. The method was suitable for the deep removal of sulfur-containing compounds from the model fuel. This desulfurization technology efficiently removed T, BT, DBT, and 4,6-DMDBT, and the sulfur removal of all sulfur compounds exceeded 99%.