The Pore Confinement Effect of FDU-12 Mesochannels on MoS2 Active Phases and Their Hydrodesulfurization Performance

FDU-12 silica with highly ordered face-centered cubic mesoporous structure is developed as support to prepare Mo/FDU-12 catalysts for hydrodesulfurization (HDS) of dibenzothiophene (DBT). A series of Mo/FDU-12 catalysts are synthesized by using incipient wetness impregnation method with different MoO3 loadings (6, 8, 10, 12, and 15wt.%). The objective of this work is to explore the pore confinement effect of FDU-12 mesochannels on the MoS2 morphology with various metal loadings. It is found that, as increasing MoO3 loadings from 6 to 15wt.%, the MoS2 nanocrystallites transform from monolayer to multilayer and the morphology changes from straight layered to curved and then to ring-like and finally to spherical-like morphology due to the restriction of cage-like pore channels of FDU-12 support. The HDS results show that the catalytic activity increases first and then decreases with the best HDS performance at the MoO3 loading of 10wt.%. In addition, we compared the HDS activity of Mo catalyst supported on FDU-12 with that on the commercial gamma-Al2O3 and SBA-15; the result exhibits that FDU-12 is superior to the other two supports due to its large pore size and ordered three-dimensional open pore channels.