Investigation of N-TiO2 Nanocatalyst Performance in Direct Oxidation of Hydrogen Sulfide to Sulfur

A huge portion of natural gas reserves contains hydrogen sulfide in Iran. Therefore, the conversion of hydrogen sulfide to sulfur is important. In this paper, at first, titanium dioxide nanoparticles were synthesized with simple and inexpensive method of sol gel, and then nitrogen was doped on it, and their performance was investigated to direct hydrogen sulfide oxidation to elemental sulfur. The synthesized catalysts were characterized for the structure and morphology by XRD, FESEM, EDX, and BET analysis. Moreover, doping titanium dioxide nanoparticles with nitrogen has shown a better performance (more than 7% increases) for the removal of hydrogen sulfide than the undoped TiO2. The reason can be attributed to the synergistic effects of nitrogen and titanium dioxide nanoparticles, the increase of the specific surface area and the pore volume of N-TiO2, and also the existence of alkaline nitrogen groups in the titanium dioxide network.