Design of Highly Efficient Nickel-Cobalt-Manganese-Molybdenum (NCMM) Nano-Catalysts Supported on Activated Carbon for Desulfurization Process

Abstract

To maintain a healthy environment and way of life in the modern world, clean fuel must be produced. It is important to totally and successfully remove sulfur-containing harmful compounds from fuel oil in order to comply with the new sulfur legislation. Numerous methods have been proposed in the literature for desulfurizing fuel oil. In this study, activated carbon (AC), which is regarded as a significant porous material, is derived from agro-wastes such as apricot shells (AS) and is loaded with different combinations of active metals. Nickel–Cobalt–Manganese (NCM) over AC is firstly prepared and evaluated experimentally. Then, several concentrations of Molybdenum (1%, 2% and 3%) are separately added to NCM to generate three novel composite mesoporous nano-catalysts (NCMM_1, NCMM_2 and NCMM_3). Several tests have been carried out to determine the catalysts’ properties, such as BETsurface area, pore volume, FTIR, TGA and SEM, XRF and XRD. These catalysts are then used in the batch oxidative desulfurization process to remove sulfur compounds from wide cut oil (from IBP to 345 °C). The pilot plant conditions were as follows: air flow rate = 120 L/h, reaction temperature = 363 K and reaction time of 1 h for all catalysts. Remarkable characteristics have been noticed, and it was discovered that the nano-catalyst NCMM_2 performed better in terms of degree of sulfur removal compared to other nano-catalysts.