Selective removal of sulfur from model diesel fuel over regenerable metal oxide adsorbents for fuel cell applications

PETR 132

Fuxia Sun, fxsun@psu.edu, Watanabe Shingo, Xiaoliang Ma, and Chunshan Song, csong@psu.edu. Clean Fuels and Catalysis Program, The Energy Institute, and Department of Energy & Geo-Environmental Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, 209 Academic Projects Building, University Park, PA 16802
Our recent research indicated that adsorbents containing Ti-Ce-O metal oxides can be made selective towards sulfur compounds. In the present work, oxidatively regenerable metal oxide adsorbents, M-Al-Ti-Ce-O (M = Zr, V, Zn, Cr, Co, Ni and Mo), were prepared by urea-gelation/ co-precipitation method and tested for removing sulfur from liquid hydrocarbon fuel. Liquid-phase adsorption of a model diesel fuel containing sulfur compounds, aromatics and olefin was conducted over these adsorbents and a supported oxide CoMo/Al2O3 at room temperature under atmospheric pressure in a batch adsorption system. The adsorptive capacity, selectivity and regenerability of the adsorbents were investigated. The adsorbents were characterized by XRD, BET and SEM methods and the results correlated with their adsorption performance. The results indicate that these multi-metal oxides have higher sulfur adsorptive capacity and sulfur adsorptive selectivity than that of commercial CoMo/Al2O3. The sulfur adsorptive capacity of model fuel over Mo-Al-Ti-Ce-O can be increased by 48.4% than that of CoMo/Al2O3. The multi-metal oxides, M-Al-Ti-Ce-O (M = Zr, Cr, Co, Ni and Mo), prefer to adsorb sulfur compounds rather than aromatics coexisting in the model fuel. These multi-component metal oxides can be regenerated in air and have better oxidatively regenerable stability.