Abstract
The scope of the present study is to describe the cracking behavior of hydrocarbons and the reduction of sulfur in gasoline in fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) process using Zn–Mg–Al additives with varying the Mg/Al molar ratios. Experiments have been carried out on a micro-activity-test (MAT) reactor using high-sulfur vacuum gas oil (VGO) feed and zinc impregnated Mg–Al spinels as additive and the commercial cracking catalyst. It was found that Zn–Mg–Al additives exhibited enhanced Lewis acidity compared with the corresponding Zn-free Mg–Al spinels. The MAT results indicated that the addition of additives reduced the yields of liquid petroleum gas and coke at low Mg contents but increased the coke yield at high Mg contents. Overall, the additives improved the yields of gasoline and diesel. It has also been shown that the rich Lewis acidity had a positive effect on the conversion of aromatic sulfur species of gasoline and the maximum reduction of gasoline sulfur was achieved with Zn/Mg4.0Al2O3 due to the synergistic effect of basicity and Lewis acidity.
Highlights
Environmental protection nowadays has been a general consensus worldwide and the better quality of motor fuels is required in the legislation of many countries [1, 2]
The scope of the present study is to describe the cracking behavior of hydrocarbons and the reduction of sulfur in gasoline in fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) process using Zn–Mg–Al additives with varying the Mg/Al molar ratios
We studied the Lewis acidity of Zn–Mg–Al additives with the varying Mg contents and its effects on the performance of catalytic reactions of hydrocarbons and sulfur reduction of FCC gasoline
Summary
Environmental protection nowadays has been a general consensus worldwide and the better quality of motor fuels is required in the legislation of many countries [1, 2] In this sense, sulfur contents in gasoline and diesel are expected to be reduced toward 10 and 50 ppm since the year 2010, respectively [3, 4]. Recent research found that additives with mixed metal oxides as supporter, expressed as Mg(Al)O with the varying amounts of alkaline MgO, were valid for reducing sulfur content of FCC gasoline [10, 12, 13]. We studied the Lewis acidity of Zn–Mg–Al additives with the varying Mg contents and its effects on the performance of catalytic reactions of hydrocarbons and sulfur reduction of FCC gasoline. The sulfur mass distribution in liquid products was analyzed by a gas chromatograph (GC-450) with a pulsed flame photometric detector (PFPD) for the detection of sulfur-containing compounds
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