The hydrodesulfurization and hydrodenitrogenation of petroleum and refinery cuts have been in continuous development and in industrial practice for several decades. New environmental constraints regarding the quality of fuels has produced a renaissance of this field as the search for novel solution to this problem intensifies. This volume reviews the structures, bonding and reactions of metal complexes of the thiophenes and other HDS-related molecules, as well as of some HDN-related organinitrogen compounds. This chemistry is analyzed in the context of modeling some key species and reactions implicated in HDS and HDN catalysis. Many parallels are drawn between organometallic and surface chemistry, and homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis.
The book should be of value to chemists and chemical engineers in academic and industrial environments, since the organometallic modeling approach emerges as a powerful tool to aid in the understanding of the structures and reaction mechanisms occurring in real systems, and in the design of novel HDS and HDN catalysts.