Hydrogen sulfide removal is a long-standing economic and environmental challenge faced by the oil and gas industries.1 Among various H2S-treatments, dry-adsorption based processes hold significant potential towards H2S removal of ppm level contaminants.2 In the mid of eighties, porous mixed oxides were investigated as regenerable sorbents for high temperature removal of H2S.3 Copper ferrite, CuFe2O4 was found to be an efficient regenerable sorbent at high sulfidation temperatures (538–600oC) and over several sulfidation-regeneration cycles possessing high stability and showing sorbent conversion at breakthrough higher than 75%.4,5 Apart from economic benefits arising from efficient lower regeneration conditions of mixed oxides, the efficient H2S capture at low-temperatures (25-150oC) is of prime importance in many industrial applications.6 In this work, we present the use of CuFe2O4/SiO2 as potential regenerable H2S sorbents at low sulfidation temperature of 150oC. The nanoparticulate studied sorbents were synthesized by thermolysis of Cu(acac)2 and Fe(acac)3 in octadecene in the presence of dual oleylamine-oleic acid capping agents followed by a modified Stöber method route in water and calcination at 450oC/2h. We found that the synthesis is sensitive to both Cu/Fe-precursor and precursors/surfactants ratio. The various CuFe2O4/SiO2 with 5-40 nm ferrite sizes were characterized with a variety of techniques including XRD, TEM and VSM. The mesoporous nanocomposites were tested as sorbents for H2S capture at 150oC showed a sulfur breakthrough capacity of 1.6 mmol/g.

Mesoporous silica coated CuFe2O4 nanoparticles: Synthesis, characterization and application in gas phase H2S removal

2019 Fall National Meeting

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