Decreasing the Sulfur Content of Crude Oil by Ultra-Sound and Activated Carbon Assisted Oxidative Method

Abstract

There is a large amount of sulfur compound in crude oil, sulfur gases such us H2S for example are emitted and can affect the environment and finally can cause problems during the processing operation of crude oil. Therefore, in this study, a method for the removal of sulfur from crude oil using an ultrasound device has been proposed. This method is a combination of oxidative method and applying ultrasonic waves to achieve the allowable sulfur content in crude oil. Samples of crude oil have been taken that we got from an al-Najaf refinery to study the effect of three parameters (activated carbon weight, hydrogen peroxide volume, and acetic acid volume) at 50oC on the desulfurization process. the optimum result of desulfurization has been found to be (81.325%) at activated carbon amount of (9gm) with (H2O2/acetic acid)(40/30)ml.

Sono-oxidative desulfurization of fuels using heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysts: A comprehensive review

“…Khlaif and Bded [97] carried out the ODS (followed by extraction) of crude oil containing 1.95% total S by weight in the presence of US and AC using different volumes of acetic acid and 50 wt% H 2 O 2 . As a result of the increase of the amount of AC used from 3 to 9 g, the number of active sites in AC increased, thus improving ODS and an optimum desulfurization of 81.325% was obtained by using 9 g AC, 40 mL H 2 O 2 , 30 mL acetic acid at 50 °C.…”

“…In addition, acetic acid is relatively low-cost [176] . In studies [97] , [165] , [177] in which desulfurization of crude oil, coal and model diesel fuel with the help of US by using acetic acid-HP oxidant system was performed, it was indicated that high desulfurization efficiency is reached in a short time at relatively low temperatures. The oxidation of sulfur compounds is caused by peroxyacetic acid and hydroxyl radicals formed in situ in the aqueous phase.…”

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Fig. 4 DPEs in the presence of heterogeneous catalysts (where 1–3, 4, 5–7, 8, 9, [10,14], 11, 12, 13, [15,19], 16, 17, 18, 20, 21 and 22 represent the references [98] , [133] , [134] , [84] , [151] , [145] , [97] , [119] , [118] , [126] , [124] , [123] , [150] , [65] , [78] , [121] , respectively). *49, 43.50 and 35.50 are DPE values calculated for DBT, 4,6-DMDBT and BT, respectively, pertaining to reference [98] .

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