Characterization and catalytic application of homogeneous nano-composite oxides ZrO2–Al2O3

Guoran Li, Wei Li, Minghui Zhang, Keyi Tao
2004 Catalysis Today  
A series of ZrO 2 -Al 2 O 3 composite oxides with different ZrO 2 contents was prepared by means of a chemical precipitation method using ZrOCl 2 ·8H 2 O and pseudoboehmite as starting materials. The structures of the samples have been investigated by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron micrography (TEM), with thermogravimetry differential thermal analysis (TG-DTA and DTG) combined. The results showed that the synthesized materials consisted of ZrO 2 and Al 2 O 3 nanosized
more » ... articles and they existed as amorphous phase in the samples with insufficient contents of ZrO 2 . The surface areas (S BET ), the pore volumes and the pore distributions were measured by nitrogen adsorption method, and a regular correlation between the pore distributions and contents of ZrO 2 was observed. NH 3 -temperature programmed desorption (NH 3 -TPD) was used to characterize the surface acidic properties of the samples. The investigation by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) indicated that there were interactions between ZrO 2 and Al 2 O 3 in the composite oxides. The synthesized ZrO 2 -Al 2 O 3 samples were purposively used as the supports for hydrodesulfurization (HDS) process. The sulfided CoMo/ZrO 2 -Al 2 O 3 catalysts were tested in the HDS reaction of dibenzothiophene (DBT), and the results showed that the sulfided CoMo catalysts supported on the composite oxide with a suitable ZrO 2 content performed a higher HDS activity than that supported on alumina.
doi:10.1016/j.cattod.2004.06.010 fatcat:2otlw4kyhbcnhpexreiaum6vuu