The Effectiveness of Ni/Ce/Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> Catalyst in the Extraction of Naphthenic Acids from Acidic Crude Oil

Abstract

Processing of petroleum crude oil with high total acid number (TAN) lead to corrosion problems in oil refinery equipment, storage, facilities and even reduces the performances of the oil. The purpose of this study is to overcome the corrosion problem in oil refinery by reducing the TAN in the oil to less than 1 mgKOH/g. A 2-methylimidazole in ethanol with the aid of Ni/Ce (10:90)/Al2O3 catalyst through the catalytic deacidification technique. The catalyst was prepared by using Incipient Wetness Impregnation (IWI) methods on alumina beads as catalyst support and calcined at 800°C, 900°C and 1000°C. Ni/Ce (10:90)/Al2O3 catalyst was characterized by using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray Diffraction Spectroscopy (XRD) and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) to study physicochemical properties of the catalyst. The results shows that Ni/Ce (10:90)/Al2O3 catalyst successfully reduced TAN in crude oil to 0.50 from 4.22 mg KOH/g at 1000°C calcination temperature and catalyst loading of 0.39% (7 beads). XRD analysis proposed Al2O3 and CeO2 fcc was the active site for Ni/Ce (10:90)/Al2O3 catalyst. C-H alkanes stretching, -CH2- alkanes stretching and pure metal oxides stretching modes were detected on the catalyst at wavelength of 2952.49 to 2852.82, 1599.38, and 862.81 to 537.27 cm-1 respectively by FTIR analysis after catalytic deacidification process which indicates that there were impurities that have adsorbed on the catalyst surface. As a conclusion, the catalysts successfully reduced the TAN value of acidic crude oil to less than 1.00 mg KOH/g.