Hierarchical porous titanium terephthalate based material with highly active sites for deep oxidative desulfurization

Deep desulfurization of fuel oil has received much attention due to the stringent demand of environmental regulations. In this work, we report that titanium terephthalate based materials with hierarchical porosity have been successfully synthesized for deep oxidative desulfurization of fuel oil. The catalytic results indicated that hierarchical porous titanium terephthalate based materials displayed superior catalytic performance in the ODS reactions of benzothiophene, dibenzothiophene and 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene. Additionally, this type of catalyst is also of great potential in other oxidative reactions involving the oxidation of phenethyl alcohol or cyclohexene. Such outstanding catalytic performance could be attributed to the presence of highly active sites and rich mesoporosity in hierarchical porous titanium terephthalate based materials. [Display omitted] •Hierarchical porous titanium terephthalate based materials have been synthesized.•Relatively high synthetic temperature is beneficial for producing the materials with rich mesoporosity.•Ti-BDC-180 displayed superior catalytic performance in oxidation reactions.•Ti-BDC-180 is a heterogeneous catalyst and can be reused.