High adsorptive performance of SiO2@Chitosan oligosaccharide hybrid aerogels for thiophenics in model fuels and aromatic products

SiO2@CSO-n (Chitosan Oligosaccharide) hybrid aerogels with different amount of CSO were simply prepared by sol-gel method combined with atmospheric drying technology, due to the slower hydrolysis rate of CSO. These hybrid aerogels were used for the adsorptive removal of thiophenics from model fuels and aromatic products. With respect to SiO2 aerogel, the adsorptive desulfurization performance of SiO2@CSO-n hybrid aerogels improved significantly, owing to the —NH2 and —NH3+ groups on the surface acted as the adsorption active centers for thiophenics based on the hydrogen bond. With the increase of CSO content, the adsorption capacity of SiO2@CSO-n for thiophene firstly increased and then decreased, among them, SiO2@CSO-200 preformed the best, up to 10.88 mg-S/gads for dibenzothiophene, 8.84 mg-S/gads for benzothiophene, 7.48 mg-S/gads for thiophene. For SiO2@CSO-200, the obvious competitive adsorption of aromatics against thiophene occurred only in aromatic products. After the fourth regeneration for used SiO2@CSO-200, the breakthrough adsorption capacity of thiophene could be completely recovered by the heating treatment regeneration mode while only recovered 72