Heavy oil (distillation temperature: 320-340 ºC) derived from the direct coal liquefaction process using Shengli coal were hydrotreated using sulfided Ni-Mo/Al2O3, Ni-W/Al2O3, and Ni-W/SiO2 catalysts respectively. The sulfided catalysts were characterized by BET, XRD, H2-TPR and NH3-TPD respectively. The evaluations of the hydrodenitrogenation (HDN) and hydrodearomatization (HDA) properties of heavy oil on the three catalysts were carried out at 400 ºC and 5.0 MPa initial H2 pressure. The W-based catalysts displayed better performances than Mo-based catalysts for the HDN and HDA reactions. Al2O3 supported catalysts were found to have higher catalytic activities than on SiO2 supported ones. The activities of sulfided catalysts were associated mainly with the nature of active sites, acidity, metal sulfide crystallite size and the amount of the reducible sulfur species of metal sulfide.
direct coal liquefaction; heavy oil; HDN; HDA
