Abstract
The kinetics, equilibrium, and statistical aspects of the sulfur removal process from hydrocarbon fuels by AFe2O4–silica nanocomposites (A: Ni, Mg, and Co) have been investigated in the present study. Nanocomposites were prepared via the auto-combustion sol–gel method and then employed in the adsorptive desulfurization (ADS) process. Next, the prepared samples were characterized by different analytical methods including XRD, SEM, TEM, FT-IR, TGA, and BET. The contributions of conventional parameters including adsorbent dosage and contact time were then studied by central composite design (CCD) under response surface methodology (RSM). Based on the statistical investigations, optimum conditions for ADS were an adsorbent dosage of 7.82 g per 50 ml of the model fuel and a contact time of 32 min. The adsorption amounts reached 38.6 mg g−1 for DBT. The quadratic model was applied for the analysis of variance. Based on the experimental data, the pseudo-first-order (PFO) model could explain the adsorption kinetics of the compounds. Furthermore, the Langmuir isotherm demonstrated considerable agreement with the experimental equilibrium data. According to the results, the NiFe2O4–SiO2 nanocomposite showed the best performance compared to other compounds. The sulfur removal efficiency increased from 63 to 94% upon increasing the NiFe2O4–SiO2 dosage from 3 to 9 g per 50 ml of the model fuel.
Highlights
Human beings require energy for any lifestyle
The linear plot fails to pass the origin, which shows that another mechanism may be accompanied by the intraparticle diffusion model.[1] the PFO model well match the obtained experimental results compared to the pseudo-second order (PSO) model, indicating that the adsorption is not a second-order reaction and con rming the occurrence of the intraparticle diffusion
Central composite design is a multi-variable of the response surface design, which is used to evaluate the effects of process variables including the mass of adsorbent and time on sulfur removal percentage, facilitating the tting of the data with the quadratic model
Summary
Human beings require energy for any lifestyle. more industrialization leads to higher energy consumption. Properties of silica gel such as environmental friendliness, high chemical stability, low cost, variety of possible structures, range of functionalization methods and control of reactions due to lower reactivity have led to its widespread use in the industry.[26,27] Mandizade et al evaluated the adsorption of sulfur from model fuel using AFe2O4 (A: Ni, Cu, Zn)– activated carbon nanocomposite and found that NiFe2O4–activated carbon with BET surface area 626 m2 gÀ1 is the best. Ferrite–silica nanocomposites have been prepared for the ADS process and the effects of the adsorbent dosage and contact time on the removal of DBT from model fuel using (CCD) as the multi-variable of the (RSD) were investigated. A combination of the PFO and intraparticle diffusion models was used to examine the kinetics of the adsorption process in this study
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