Desulfurization of actual diesel fuel onto modified mesoporous material Co/MCM-41

• The silanols group of MCM-41 plays an important role in Co(NO 3 ) 2 ·6H 2 O dispersion. • The modified mesoporous silica Co/MCM-41 was removed 44.02% sulfur from actual diesel fuel successfully. • The sulfur content was reduced from 1.2 wt% to 0.67 wt%, without changing in the characterization of diesel fuel. In this study, a mesoporous material (Co/MCM-41) sorbent was created and modified using the incipient wetness impregnation (IWI) method for desulfurization of actual diesel fuel. The sorbent was described utilizing X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), BET surface area, and Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) techniques. The desulfurization performances were investigated for actual diesel fuel from the Al-Dura Oil Refinery containing a total sulfur content of 1.2 wt%. The efficiency of Co/MCM-41 was studied under different operating conditions, including the Co/MCM-41 dose, reaction time, mixing speed, and temperature. The most favorable operational conditions were achieved as 0.4 gm Co/MCM-41, 210 min, 1000 rpm, and 70 °C. The isotherm models of Langmuir, Freundlich, and Temkin were applied. The optimum depiction of the steady state data was obtained using Temkin models with a correlation coefficient (R 2 ) of 0.9995. The kinetics of the sulfur components on Co/MCM-41 were studied using pseudo-first- and second-order kinetic models as well as intra-particle diffusion. The adsorption process can be effectively explained by a pseudo-second-order adsorption model with a coefficient of correlation (R 2 ) of 0.9899. The thermodynamic parameters calculated were enthalpy (ΔH o ), entropy (ΔS o ), and Gibbs free energy (ΔG o ). The findings demonstrated that a mesoporous Co/MCM-41 adsorbent could effectively remove sulfur from actual diesel. The process reduced the sulfur content from 1.2 wt% to 0.67 wt%, which corresponds to a desulfurization efficiency of 44.02 %. As a consequence, the study’s results might serve as a springboard for ongoing investigations into the removal of sulfur. The encapsulated mesoporous with Co(II) played a key role in the sulfur removal efficiency.