New design of eco-friendly Catalytic Electro - Photo Desulfurization process for real diesel fuel

Abstract

Recently, due to the refineries processes considerations and environmental issues major limitations have been imposed on the sulfur compounds presented in petroleum distillates. Therefore, to reduce the sulfur compounds to minimum levels and to meet the global legislations, many of techniques were used, among them electro chemical photo desulfurization technique was used here. In this study, DBT was removed using electro chemical photo desulfurization over electrodes of titanium and stainless steel using Fe2O3/TiO2 as a catalyst under different temperatures (45, 60, 75 ℃), current density (10, 15, 20 A/m2), electrolyte concentration (25, 35, 45 wt%). The catalyst was characterized by different advanced surface techniques such as N2- adsorption-desorption, SEM-EDX, FTIR, and XRD. The reaction kinetic parameters (reaction order and activation energy) were estimated based on the experimental runs. According to the results obtained, this technique was revealed an efficient method with highest removal of 93.79% achieved using Fe2O3/TiO2 under the best of experimental operating conditions at 75 ℃, 20 A/m2 and 35 wt% of temperature, current density and electrolyte concentration respectively. It can be concluded that the electro chemical photo oxidative desulfurization reaction followed was pseudo 1st order and 41.67 kJ/mole activation energy over titanium dioxides catalyst.