Ni/ZnO is used as a catalytic sorption material together with structural substrate for the S Zorb desulfurization process. At industrial scale, the use of Al₂O₃/SiO₂ materials as such structural substrate results in long-term deactivation via the formation of Zn₂SiO₄ under hydrothermal conditions. This work aims for the investigation of the origin of such solid-state reaction by applying multiple characterization techniques, e.g. in-situ XRD, solid-state NMR and FT-IR. Two different common Al₂O₃/SiO₂ materials, i.e. perlite and Al-montmorillonite, are studied comparatively in this work. As a result, Al-montmorillonite shows superior hydrothermal stability than perlite. It is observed that the density and reactivity of the Si-OH group is directly correlated to the formation rate of Zn₂SiO₄. Moreover, it has been further shown that the hydrogen-bonded Si-OH and bound molecular water are the major active species which lead to the formation of Zn₂SiO₄, as compared to the isolated silanol group. At last, both substrates are used for the preparation of the catalytic sorption materials in the S Zorb process. The desulfurization results show that the sorbent that has been prepared by using Al-MMT as structural substrate has maintained the sulfur-removal activity for much longer time than the one prepared from perlite.

Ni / ZnO与结构基质一起用作S Zorb脱硫工艺的催化吸附材料。在工业规模上，使用Al ₂ O ₃ / SiO ₂材料作为这种结构基底通过在水热条件下形成Zn ₂ SiO ₄导致长期失活。这项工作旨在通过应用多种表征技术（例如原位XRD，固态NMR和FT-IR）研究这种固态反应的起源。两种不同的常见Al ₂ O ₃ / SiO ₂材料，即珍珠岩和铝蒙脱石，在这项工作中进行了比较研究。结果，铝蒙脱石显示出比珍珠岩优异的水热稳定性。可以看出，Si-OH基的密度和反应性与Zn ₂ SiO ₄的形成速率直接相关。而且，进一步表明，氢键结合的Si-OH和键合的分子水是导致形成Zn ₂ SiO ₄的主要活性物质。与孤立的硅烷醇基相比。最后，在S Zorb法中将两种基材都用于制备催化吸附材料。脱硫结果表明，与用珍珠岩制备的吸附剂相比，以Al-MMT为结构载体制备的吸附剂具有更长的脱硫活性。