ADSORPTIVE DESULPHURIZATION OF FUELS BY POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC HYDROCARBONS DERIVED NANOPOROUS POLYMERS

Abstract

The population of the world has reached eight billion individuals by June 2023 and is growing at an exponential rate. Majority of energy is withdrawing from petrochemical products including coal, oil and natural gas. The overconsumption of the petrochemical products by overpopulation result in several hazardous problems. Monocyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (MAHs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polycyclic aromatic sulphur heterocycles (PASHs) are recognized as the prime carcinogenic aromatic pollutants present in the petrochemicals. Therefore, the management of these pollutants should be a foremost concern in order to safeguard the environment. In the present research, a prototype is presented for the sustainable management of MAHs, PAHs and PASHs to used them as the precursors to synthesize three series (poly-PAHs, poly-PAH-Cs and poly-PASHs) of high surface area (SABET) hypercrosslinked nanoporous polymeric materials. The synthesis has been carried out within only 60 min by quick and facile microwave assisted approach. A total number of 250 materials have been synthesized by varying the precursors, solvent amount, temperature, time, catalyst amount and linker amount in order to obtain a total number of 22 optimized materials with best textural properties (SABET of 401-1565 m2 g-1). 8 optimized materials of the first series (poly-PAHs) have been synthesized by using eight different MAH/PAHs as the precursors (benzene, naphthalene, biphenyl, acenaphthene, anthracene, phenanthrene, fluoranthene and pyrene) formaldehyde dimethyl acetal (FDA) as an external crosslinker and anhydrous FeCl3 as catalyst under argon atmosphere in dichloroethane (DCE) as the solvent. By using the same 8 precursors, second series of materials (poly-PAH-Cs) have been synthesized by using anhydrous AlCl3 as a catalyst in solvent CHCl3 under an argon atmosphere, without any external crosslinker. Third series (poly-PASHs) of materials (6 materials) are synthesized by utilizing three PASHs (thiophene, benzothiophene and dibenzothiophene) via both the abovementioned method i.e., with and without using external crosslinker (FDA). The structural, microstructural and textural characterization of all the optimized materials are carried out by state-of-the-art technique. The synthesized materials are used as the efficient adsorbents for desulphurization of model and real diesel fuels. The best outcomes were achieved by the polymer poly-PHEN-C (SABET ~ 1553 m2 g-1), synthesized by using phenanthrene as the precursor, AlCl3 as a catalyst in solvent CHCl3 under an argon atmosphere, without any external crosslinker.