Desulfurization of transportation fuels (simulated solution and gasoline) with commercial and ion-exchanged X zeolite: Adsorption isotherm and batch adsorption kinetics modeling

Deep desulfurization of transportation fuels is becoming mandatory in a near future. Standard sulfur levels for gasoline and diesel fuels were determined less than 30 and 15 ppm, respectively, in 2006. Reaching a level of zero ppm total sulfur content in all kinds of transportation fuels is expected (and mandatory) after 2010 [1]. Conventional HDS processes are unable only to lower the sulfur content less than 50, or even zero, in an economic and industrially feasible fashion. Instead, the idea is to use adsorbents like zeolites to lower the sulfur content of the treated streams under HDS processes to zero level. Nowadays, research on developing new functionalized zeolitic adsorbents for the afore-mentioned means is underway. This work, in the first part, studies the gasoline (Abadan Refinery) desulfurization characteristics of a commercial 13X zeolite. The isotherm at RT will be evaluated and the kinetics of the adsorption process under the batch mode is modeled