The objective of this work was to develop a highly active hydrotreating catalyst for processing heavy gas oil to provide qualified feedstock for hydroisomerization or a hydrocracking unit. The NiMo/γ-Al₂O₃ catalysts doped with phosphate were prepared by introducing two kinds of additives, and the influencing factors for highly active hydrodenitrogenation (HDN) were revealed. TEM analysis results showed that the catalyst with a small MoS2 stack length tended to have high activity due to more active sites being exposed. Laser Raman spectroscopy demonstrated that the catalysts contained PMo₁₂O₄₀³⁻ metal active phases. For industrial heavy VGO feedstock, the nitrogen content can be reduced to 2 ppm with a hydrotreating process. The VI of the hydrotreated product can be improved from 132 to 145 after hydrotreatment, which is necessary to produce group III base oil as the most valuable base oil type. This work provides an insight into the high activity of hydrotreating catalysts for industrial lubricant hydroprocessing.

Proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) is currently limited by the sluggish kinetics and poor durability of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). In this work, a structurally uniform IrB_160-4 catalyst was synthesized through a simple, scalable one-pot aqueous method. This template-free method enables near-quantitative yields and gram-scale preparation, with products rapidly separated via simple filtration. The catalyst consists of uniform, nanoclusters self-assembled from highly crystalline ~3 nm Ir nanoparticles. The optimized catalyst exhibits superior OER activity over commercial Ir-Black. The assembled proton exchange membrane electrolyzer, utilizing a low anodic iridium loading of 0.5 mg cm⁻², demonstrates excellent performance (2.0 A cm⁻² @ 1.79 V) and high durability (>1500 h). This synthesis strategy provides a feasible method for achieving efficient and stable PEM water electrolysis for hydrogen production.