Modeling of the Adsorptive Desulfurization of Diesel Fuel in a Fixed-Bed Column

✍ Scribed by M. Muzic; Z. Gomzi; K. Sertic-Bionda

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 315 KB
• Volume: 33
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0930-7516
• DOI: 10.1002/ceat.201000013

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Adsorptive desulfurization enables the attainment of ultra‐low sulfur content in hydrocarbon fuels by removing the refractory sulfur compounds, which are difficult to remove in hydrodesulferization (HDS) processing when sulfur concentrations below 10 mg kg^–1^ must be attained. In this work, diesel fuel was desulfurized by adsorption using activated carbon as an adsorbent and the adsorption was carried out in a fixed‐bed column. The output sulfur content of less then 0.7 mg kg^–1^ was achieved for the lowest flow rate of 1.0 cm^3^min^–1^ and the highest bed depth of 28.4 cm at 50 °C. In all the experiments, at least one output sample contained less then 10.0 mg kg^–1^ of sulfur with a longest achieved breakthrough time of 11.8 h. A mathematical model of the fixed‐bed adsorber was applied to describe the kinetics and to estimate the breakthrough curves. The model equations included a differential material balance for a liquid phase and a mass transfer rate expression. The ability of the model to fit the experimental data was shown to be satisfactory.