Design of oscillatory helical baffled reactor and dual functional mesoporous catalyst for oxidative desulfurization of real diesel fuel

Abstract

Enhancing real diesel fuel properties by expelling pollutants using a new design has received considerable interest in the present day. This work investigates the conversion of sulfur compounds via oxidation reaction with peracetic acid as an oxidant. For this purpose, a dual functional mesoporous catalyst was synthesized via loading active metal (iron oxide) nanoparticles over mesopore γ-alumina-anatase titanium oxide prepared via the impregnation procedure (IWI) and precipitation methods, respectively. The novel design of the mesoporous catalyst represents the dual functional catalyst in the oxidative desulfurization process (ODS). The mesoporous catalyst that was formulated underwent a comprehensive analysis using various characterization techniques such as physical adsorption-desorption under N2, X-ray diffraction-XRD, Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy-FTIR, Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscopy-FESEM, Energy dispersive X-ray analyzer-EDX, and thermogravimetric analysis-TGA. A newly designed laboratory pilot plant for an oscillatory helical baffled reactor (OHBR) was developed and utilized for the ODS process to evaluate the performance of the synthesized mesopore catalyst. The investigated rapid conversion for sulfur removal was found to be 98.42 % under ambient operating conditions such as oscillation of frequency 2 Hz, oscillation of amplitude 8 mm, temperature of oxidation 80°C, and residence time of 9 min. It is clearly observed that the new design of OHBR and mesoporous catalyst highly affected sulfur removal, resulting in a clean diesel.