The bio-templating approach offers a promising route for preparing highly efficient bulk hydrodesulfurization (HDS) catalysts, due to its simplicity, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness. In this study, mesoporous CoMo bulk catalysts were fabricated for the HDS of thiophene using pomelo mesocarp as a sustainable hard template via the impregnation-calcination method. The characterization results confirmed that the catalysts successfully inherited the structural features of pomelo mesocarp, resulting in a mesoporous framework composed of interconnected nanoparticles. Among these catalysts, the CoMo-0.5 catalyst exhibited the highest activity, achieving a thiophene conversion of 93.5% at 1 MPa and 360 °C. This superior performance can be attributed to its lower stacking number, shorter slab length, higher MoS2 dispersion, and developed mesoporous channels, which collectively increase the number of accessible active sites and promote efficient mass transfer. This study demonstrates a green and cost-effective strategy for fabricating high-performance bulk HDS catalysts using renewable biomass templates.
Song et al. (Sun,) studied this question.