Highly dispersed copper species supported on SBA-15 mesoporous materials for SOx removal: Influence of the CuO loading and of the support

Abstract In the present work, organized mesoporous SBA-15 and amorphous Aerosil 380 silicas were modified by copper incorporation through wet impregnation of copper nitrate to obtain SOx regenerable adsorbents. Impregnation, drying and calcination conditions were carefully controlled in order to obtain highly dispersed Cu 2 + species assumed to be Cu–O–Si species. Materials were evaluated as SOx adsorbents through multicycle adsorption/regeneration experiments and were fully characterized before and after sulfation by XRD (X-Ray Diffraction), XRF (X-Ray Fluorescence), SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy) and TEM (Transmission Electron Microscopy) analyses. The influence of the nature of the support and of the copper loading on the adsorbent behavior was studied. Results show that the adsorbent performances in SOx trapping along multicycle operations depend on both the copper loading and the nature of the silica support. The characterizations of the aged adsorbents suggest that their deactivation along multicycle operations is due to the copper species sintering. Results show that there is an optimal copper loading for a maximal SOx adsorption efficiency.