High temperature oxidizing-resistant magnetic high entropy catalyst for efficient oxidative desulfurization

Engineering a magnetic response catalyst for ultra-deep oxidative desulfurization of diesel is a valid strategy for recycling. However, for traditional magnetic response catalysts, high temperature is unfavorable, which will induce demagnetization. In this work, a high entropy structure was proposed to construct a magnetic response MoFeNiCuCoOx-1100 (HEO-1100) catalyst by the ion substitution method. Because of the high-entropy effect, the metallic elements in HEO-1100 showed electron-deficiency status, making the magnetism could be retained after 1100 °C treatment. Moreover, detailed characterizations showed that the oxidative desulfurization active sites, molybdenum oxide, were uniformly dispersed in the HEO-1100, which was beneficial to the promotion of oxidative desulfurization. Because of the electron-deficient structure along with the high dispersion of active sites, the HEO-1100 catalyst possessed significantly enhanced catalytic performance in oxidative desulfurization with oxygen as an oxidant. Especially, owing to the magnetism, the HEO-1100 catalyst could be readily separated and still exhibited high catalytic activity after 18 times recycling. Furthermore, the desulfurization product, sulfone, could be separated, which was a high-value-added product for medicine.