2ND ROW TRANSITION-METAL SULFIDES FOR THE HYDROTREATMENT OF COAL-DERIVED NAPHTHA .1. CATALYST PREPARATION, CHARACTERIZATION AND COMPARISON OF RATE OF SIMULTANEOUS REMOVAL OF TOTAL SULFUR, NITROGEN AND OXYGEN

Naphtha derived from an Illinois No. 6 coal contains appreciable quant ities of sulfur-, nitrogen- and oxygen-containing compounds. The hydro treatment of this naphtha has been evaluated over unsupported transiti on metal sulfide catalysts of the second row in the Periodic Table. Th e catalysts were prepared by a room temperature precipitation reaction . Surface areas, crystalline phase and particle size distributions wer e determined by Brunauer-Emmet-Teller (BET), X-ray diffraction (XRD) a nd transmission electron microscopy (TEM), respectively. A comparison of average particle sizes calculated from these three techniques has e nabled the understanding of the morphology of the transition metal sul fides. The catalysts exhibit a so-called volcano plot for the HDS of d ibenzothiophene. Similar so-called volcano plots are also exhibited fo r the simultaneous hydrodesulfurization (HDS), hydrodenitrogenation (H DN) and the hydrodeoxygenation (HDO) of the coal-derived naphtha conta ining a mixture of heteroatoms. The order of reactivity of the transit ion metal catalysts is the same for all three of the processes. Ruthen ium sulfide (RuS2) is the most active catalyst for HDS, HDN and HDO of the coal-derived naphtha.