Preparation of gold-decorated simple and sulfur-doped carbon spheres for desulfurization of fuel

In the present work, because of the importance of the lowering sulfur level in fuels, the new materials have been designed for adsorptive desulfurization. In this line, carbon spheres and sulfur-doped carbon spheres have been prepared from the acetylene gas and sulfur powder using chemical vapor deposition method. To increase the level of desulfurization, the prepared spheres were decorated with gold nanoparticles with different percentages (5, 10, 15 and 20%). The structures and surface properties of the products were fully characterized using common methods. The study of thermal behaviors showed the sulfur-doped spheres has higher thermal stabilities than the carbon spheres. The gold-decorated products were employed to adsorb dibenzothiophene from n-octane solution as a model fuel. The 95% adsorption efficiency and 364 (mg/g) of dibenzothiophene was achieved using 10% gold-decorated sulfur-doped spheres at 25 °C. The results showed that the sulfur-doped product is more appropriate that the simple carbon spheres and modification of this product with gold increased its adsorption capacities. [Display omitted] •Gold-decorated carbon spheres were employed for desulfurization.•The sulfur-doped products showed and higher adsorption potencies and thermal stabilities.•The 95% removal and 364 mg/g maximum adsorption capacity was achieved.•The adsorption obeyed from the Temkin and pseudo-second order kinetic models.