Green synthesis of KIT-6 from water-glass as support for hydrodesulfurization catalysts, and its comparison with KIT-6 synthesized from TEOS

Abstract The potential of KIT-6 as support for hydrodesulfurization (HDS) catalysts has been demonstrated in several works. Main advantage of KIT-6 consists of more than double of surface area that is accessible for large molecules (pore diameter above 6 nm). In the synthesis of KIT-6 prevails the use of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) as silicon source, being the requirement of this alkoxide one of the main hindrance to consolidate the use of this support on industry. This work presents a green synthesis of KIT-6 and Ti-modified KIT-6 obtained from water-glass, which were used to synthesize CoMo catalysts with metal loading of 16% wt, through incipient impregnation method assisted by ultrasound. Performance of these catalysts on HDS of DBT was compared for equivalent supports synthesized from TEOS and results demonstrate that the use of water-glass for support synthesis does not affect significantly the catalytic activity, allowing thus its use for the design of HDS commercial catalysts.