Removal sulfur components from heavy crude oil by natural clay

Abstract

Abstract Reducing the sulfur content of crude oil and its derivatives has drawn the attention of researchers around the world to reduce environmental pollution. Desulfurization is a process used for the effective removal of sulfur from the heavy crude oil. In this work, the adsorption desulfurization technique was applied for heavy crude oil Baghdad east field with 4.31% sulfur content and treated with modified Iraqi bentonite (Fe and H-bentonite) to increase effectiveness of sorbent surfaces. The modified bentonite was used in sulfur removal experiments, the efficiency of modified bentonites was studied under different ratio of oil to adsorbent (10:0.3, 10:0.6, 10:0.9, 10:1.2) and different interval times (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 h) at a constant temperature of 40 °C. The results showed that high yield desulfurization were achieved with Fe-bentonite after 5 h, at 40 °C, and using oil to adsorbent ratio (10:1.2), under these optimal conditions the Fe- bentonite was adsorbed about 81.4385% of sulfur from the crude oil, while 37.28% by H-bentonite at the same condition. In this study, energy-dispersive spectroscopy techniques, surface characterization, x-ray diffraction, x-ray fluorescence spectrometer and scanning electron microscope analysis of raw and modified bentonite were performed. The particles size distribution of H-bentonite range from 1.763 µm to 158.866 µm, while Fe-bentonite is 0.036–126.191 µm, the modification of bentonite with Fe enhances the surface area, pore and decreasing particle size over acid treatment, which explained the high desulfurization efficiency by Fe-bentonite.