Experimental, kinetic, and thermodynamic studies of adsorptive desulfurization and denitrogenation of model fuels using novel mesoporous materials

Maryam Ahmadi; Mohammad Mohammadian; Mohammad Reza Khosravi-Nikou; Alireza Baghban

doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2019.04.029

Experimental, kinetic, and thermodynamic studies of adsorptive desulfurization and denitrogenation of model fuels using novel mesoporous materials

J Hazard Mater. 2019 Jul 15:374:129-139. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2019.04.029. Epub 2019 Apr 8.

Authors

Maryam Ahmadi¹, Mohammad Mohammadian², Mohammad Reza Khosravi-Nikou³, Alireza Baghban⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering, Abadan Faculty of Petroleum, Petroleum University of Technology, Abadan, Iran.
² Department of Gas Engineering, Ahwaz Faculty of Petroleum, Petroleum University of Technology, Ahwaz, Iran.
³ Department of Gas Engineering, Ahwaz Faculty of Petroleum, Petroleum University of Technology, Ahwaz, Iran. Electronic address: mr.khosravi@put.ac.ir.
⁴ Chemical Engineering Department, Amirkabir University of Technology, Mahshahr Campus, Mahshahr,Iran. Electronic address: Alireza_baghban@ut.ac.ir.

PMID: 30991165
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2019.04.029

Abstract

The kinetics, equilibrium and thermodynamics studies of adsorptive desulfurization and denitrogenation to eliminate the refractory sulfur and nitrogen compounds like BT, DBT, quinoline and carbazole of model fuel by mesoporous material (MSU-S) and cobalt modified mesoporous material (CoO-MSU-S) adsorbents were carried out. The adsorption performance, capacity and selectivity of the adsorbent toward sulfur and nitrogen compounds were examined. Equilibrium and kinetics experiments confirmed that Co⁺² impregnation would enhance the adsorption capacity of MSU-S. The results demonstrated that CoO-MSU-S led to a considerable improvement in the adsorption performance. The adsorption amounts reached 18.41, 21.20, 39.65 and 24.60 mg.g^-1 for BT, DBT, quinoline and carbazole, respectively. The Langmuir isotherm model showed good fittings with the experimental equilibrium data for benzothiophene, dibenzothiophene and carbazole, and the data for quinoline was expressed well by the Freundlich for CoO-MSU-S adsorbent. Negative Gibbs free energy showed that all sulfur and nitrogen compounds were adsorbed spontaneously. The experimental data revealed that the pseudo-second-order model can describe the kinetics of adsorption of compounds on the adsorbent. The data obtained from the breakthrough curves indicated that DBT < BT < carbazole < quinoline order for the selectivity of modified adsorbent towards the adsorbates.

Keywords: Adsorption; Denitrogenation; Desulfurization; Model fuel.