Desulfurization of JP-8 Jet Fuel by Selective Adsorption over a Ni-based Adsorbent for Micro Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

Abstract

This work focuses on optimizing the performance of a Ni/SiO 2 -Al 2 O 3 adsorbent for the adsorptive desulfurization of jet fuel, including JP-8 jet fuel containing around 736 ppmw sulfur and a light JP-8 jet fuel having around 380 ppmw sulfur, obtained by fractionation for micro solid oxide fuel cell applications. The fractionated light JP-8 jet fuel had only traces of heavier alkylated benzothiophenes (C3-BTs). The removal of C3-BTs such as sterically hindered 2,3, 7-trimethylbenzothiophene from the JP-8 jet fuel by fractionation improved the adsorbent capacity by 2.5 times. The particle sizes of the adsorbent and its bed dimensions were examined and optimized to achieve targeted sulfur adsorption capacity of over 10 mg of S/g of adsorbent without encountering pressure drop across the bed. The adsorptive desulfurization of fractionated light JP-8 over the Ni/SiO 2 -Al 2 O 3 adsorbent having particle sizes between 0.15 and 0.25 mm offered a sulfur breakthrough adsorption capacity of about 11.5 mg of S/g of adsorbent without developing any significant pressure drop across the beds. High sulfur-adsorption capacity could be achieved with Ni/SiO 2 -Al 2 O 3 when the overall aspect ratio, axial aspect ratio, and radial aspect ratio of the adsorbent bed were around 60, 3000, and 100, respectively.

Production of low sulfur diesel fuel via adsorption: an equilibrium and kinetic study on the adsorption of dibenzothiophene onto NaY zeolite

“…Various types of adsorbents such as reduced metals (Fukunaga et al 2003;Velu 2005a, 2005b), mixed oxides (Watanabe et al 2004), activated carbon (Haji and Erkey 2004;Kim et al 2006;Wang and Yang 2007), zeolites-based materials Jiang and Ng 2006;Yang et al 2003;Hernandez-Maldonado et al 2003a, 2003bNg et al 2005;Jiang et al 2005) and some novel porous materials (Kim et al 2006;Velu et al 2005b;Ma et al 2003) have been studied and the possible mechanisms have also been proposed. Recently, Song's group (Kim et al 2006) has discussed in detail the ultra-deep desulfurization of diesel fuel by selective adsorption of six different species over three different adsorbents, namely, supported nickel adsorbent, activated alumina and activated carbon, of which activated carbon shows higher adsorptive capcacity and selectivity for sulfur, especially for the compounds with methyl groups, such as 4,6-dimethyldibenzothiophene (4,6-DMDBT).…”

Characteristics of sulfur removal by silver-titania adsorbents at ambient conditions

“…A number of transition metal oxides have been employed for this purpose Khare 2001;Morton et al 2004aMorton et al , 2004bMorton et al , 2004cPrice et al 2003;Simon et al 2004;Sughrue et al 2003). Ni in its reduced metallic form Ma et al 2005;Velu et al 2005b), supported chloride salts of Cu and Pd (Hernández-Maldonado et al 2005b;Wang et al 2006), zeolitic structures ion exchanged with Cu, Ag, Ce, Ni have also been shown to be effective (Bhandari et al 2006;Hernández-Maldonado et al 2005b;Yang 2003, 2004c;King and Li 2006;Velu et al 2003;Xue et al 2006); particularly Y type zeolites (Bhandari et al 2006;King and Li 2006;Takahashi et al 2001a;Takahashi and Yang 2001b;Yang et al 2003Yang et al , 2004. Among support structures, SiO 2 , Al 2 O 3 (Hernández-Maldonado and Yang 2004b; Jeevanandam et al 2005;Kim et al 2006) and activated carbon (Hernández-Maldonado and Yang 2004b; Kim et al 2006) are the most common.…”

Zirconia-silica based mesoporous desulfurization adsorbents

“…This method involves the creation of sorbents that can quickly remove organosulfur compounds (ideally to a sub ppm w S level) under ambient conditions without the need for co-catalysts such as hydrogen gas, while being reusable and affordable to produce [10,11]. Of particular interest in this regard is high surface area openframeworks.…”