Abstract: Surface molecular imprinting is an effective way to prepare materials for selective removal of thiophene and its derivatives in transportation fuels and the support material is a crucial factor in determining the adsorption performance of resultant surface molecularly imprinted polymers (SMIP). In this work, a series of SMIP were prepared with dibenzothoiphene (DBT) as a template and various carbon materials as the support for desulfurization of fuel oil. The results demonstrated the porous carbon microspheres (PCMSs) as the support are far superior in preparing SMIP to nonporous carbon microspheres and conventional active carbon. Owing to its porous structure, regular spherical shape, high active surface area and thermal stability, SMIP/PCMSs obtained in this work exhibit excellent performance in the selective removal of DBT, with an outstanding adsorption capacity of 118 mg g-1 and favorable regenerability. In addition, the adsorption kinetic and isotherm outcomes suggest that physical interactions are mainly involved in the whole adsorption processes and the adsorption may be an integrated process of heterogeneous monolayer and multilayer adsorption. The thermodynamic analysis indicates that the adsorption takes place spontaneously and the adsorption process is endothermic, the pore diffusion and mass transfer as well as physical interaction between DBT and SMIP/PCMSs predominate in the whole adsorption process
Template and target information: dibenzothoiphene, DBT