Solvent Selection in Impregnation of Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles into MCM-41 Investigation of Its Ability Toward H 2 S Removal from Crude Oil Ali Akbar Miran Beigi, *1 Nastaran Hazrati, 1,2 Majid Abdouss 2 and Amir Vahid 1 1) Research Institute of Petroleum Industry, Tehran, Iran. 2) Department of Chemistry, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. Abstract Silicate mesoporous materials are of the main interesting adsorbents for decreasing of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) from crude oil. In this work zinc impregnated highly ordered MCM-41 was synthesized via post-synthesis functionalization and was used as adsorbent for removal of H2S from crude oil. Also the variation of solvents was mainly adjusted. In order to determine the ideal solvent for the synthesis of zinc incorporated MCM-41, a few solvents (water, ethanol and THF) has been tried in these experiments. The experiments showed that THF is a better solvent to get better materials. Keywords: MCM-41; ZnO Nanoparticle; solvent; H2S removal; Crude oil © 2014 Published by Journal of Nanoanalysis. 1. Introduction Mesoporous silicas are one of the best-known and most widely applied porous materials. Since the discovery of MCM-41, the researches dealing with the controlled design of porous materials with nanometer scale periodicity have expanded rapidly. Unlike previous mesoporous silica, MCM-41 has ordered and well-defined pore structures with narrow pore size distributions [1, 2]. The pore size of MCM-41 is large enough to accommodate a variety of large molecules, that’s why it is extensively used as adsorbents, catalysts and catalyst supports owing to its high surface areas and site accessibility [3-5]. Besides variable pore diameters and large surface areas, MCM-41 contain different types of silanol groups, i.e. external surface, internal surface silanol group which can be functionalized by functional groups. The silanol groups present at the surface of the walls are suitable for chemical bonding of organic ligands or anchoring inorganic species. [6]. In one way functionality is directly introduced via reaction of silanol * Corresponding Author E-mail: miranbeigiaa@ripi.ir