Photomodulation on adsorptive desulfurization by Ag(0): Photothermal active sites with high stability

Ag(I) have been applied as active sites to adsorptive desulfurization of transportation fuels. However, its introduction brings the issues of instability and difficulty in desorption. Here, Ag(0) was dispersed in metal-organic frameworks and used as the photothermal active sites with high stability for desulfurization. Unlike Ag(I), Ag(0) is insensitive to light and can be precisely heated for desorption through surface plasmon resonance. Interestingly, Ag(0) has weak interactions with dibenzothiophene than π-complexation, but shows the comparable uptake and selectivity to that of Ag(I). The weak adsorbent-adsorbate interactions fit the photomodulation on desorption where light energy was precisely used to heat the active sites of Ag(0), avoiding heat conduction and loss in the traditional temperature-swing adsorption. In a fixed bed, the desorption time of the photomodulation process was reduced by nearly half compared with the washing method with hot solvent, and the energy used can be saved by 46.2% in theory.