engleski

Optimization of diesel fuel desulfurization by adsorption on activated carbon

Diesel fuel was desulfurized by adsorption on a commercial activated carbon in a batch adsorber. Response surface methodology was applied for optimizing the adsorption process of organic sulfur compounds. The four factor Box-Behnken design with five center points and two responses was performed and aimed at developing second order polynominal models and to generate the optimum conditions. The objective was to find how output sulfur concentration and sorption capacity are related to the input sulfur concentration, adsorbent mass, time and temperature in order to get a clear picture and lead points for further column research. Adsorptive desulfurization of diesel fuel is a viable alternative to the conventional hydrodesulfurization process which is used on a large scale in petroleum refining industry but in most cases can not achieve the ultra low sulfur content of below 10 mg/kg. Additionally, several separate experiments were conducted at the determined optimum conditions and good agreement between experimental data and the values calculated using the models was obtained.

desulfurization; diesel fuel; adsorption; activated carbon

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