Kinetics of Triphase Extractive Oxidative Desulfurization of Benzothiophene with Molecular Oxygen Catalyzed by HPA-5

The triphasic aerobic extractive desulfurization of benzothiophene (BT) using an aqueous H-8[PV5Mo7O40] solution as catalyst and O-2 as oxidant was investigated. A time-resolved analysis of all reaction products in the gas, organic and aqueous phase, is given. The organic sulfur in BT is mainly converted to sulfuric acid. Mass transport limitations can be excluded. The reaction orders are 1 with regard to BT, and 0.5 both for HPA-5 and O-2. Calculated data derived from this mechanism with a power law kinetic approach show good agreement to the experimental data for conversions below 60 %. At higher BT conversions, significant deviations are found, suggesting that acidic products formed in the BT oxidation affect the catalyst and therefore the initial kinetics of the BT oxidation.