YesThe present study explored a novel oxidative desulfurization (ODS) method of light gas oil fuel, which combines a catalytic oxidation step of the dibenzothiophene compound directly in the presence of molecular air as oxidant to obtain high quality fuel for light gas oil.\ud In chemical industries and industrial research, catalysis play a significant role. Heightened concerns for cleaner air together with stricter environmental legislations on sulphur content in addition to fulfill economic have created a driving force for the improvement of more efficient technologies and motivating an intensive research on new oxidative catalysts. As the lower quality fuel becomes more abundant, additional challenges arise such as more severe operation conditions leading to higher corrosion of the refinery installations, catalyst deactivation and poisoning. Therefore, among the technologies to face these challenges is to develop catalysts that can be applied economically under moderate conditions.\ud The objective of this work is to design a suitable synthetic catalyst for oxidative desulfurization (ODS) of light gas oil (LGO) containing model sulphur compound (dibenzothiophene (DBT)) using air as oxidant and operating under different but moderate operating conditions. The impregnation method is used to characterize two homemade catalysts, cobalt oxide (Co3O4/γ-Al2O3) and manganese oxide (MnO2/γ-Al2O3). The prepared catalysts showed that the manganese oxide has a good impregnation (MnO2=13%), good pore size distribution and larger surface area. A set of experiments related to ODS of dibenzothiophene has been carried out in a continuous flow isothermal trickle bed reactor using light gas oil as a feedstock utilizing both catalysts prepared in-house. At constant pressure of 2 bar and with different initial concentration of sulphur within dibenzothiophene, the temperature of the process was varied from 403K to 473K and the liquid hourly space velocity from(LHSV) was varied from 1 to 3 hr-1. The results showed that an increase in reaction temperature and decreasing in LHSV, higher conversion was obtained.\ud Although both catalysts showed excellent catalytic performance on the removal of molecule sulphur compound from light gas oil, the catalyst MnO2 catalyst exhibited higher conversion than Co3O4 catalyst at the same process operating conditions

Owing to the environmental regulations with respect to sulfur content and continuing challenges of finding a suitable catalyst of such impurity, a driving force for the development of more efficient technologies a deep research on new oxidative catalysts is considered an important issue in fuel quality improvement. Thus, the present study shows a novel percent of nano-catalyst with 18% zinc oxide (ZnO) of active component over nano-alumina that has not been reported in the public domain for sulfur removal from kerosene fuel by air (oxidative desulfurization (ODS) method). Where, such percent of the active component on the nano-alumina helps to add one or two atoms of oxygen to sulfur content in the kerosene. The nano-catalyst (ZnO/nano-alumina-particles composite) is prepared by precipitation of zinc oxide and loaded over nano-alumina in one-step. The activity of the prepared catalyst was tested utilizing ODS process of kerosene fuel by air in a batch reactor. A set of experiments were conducted with a wide range of operating conditions, where the reaction temperature was ranged from 150 to 190ºC, the reaction time from 30 to 50 min and the catalyst weight from 0.4 to 1 g. The experimental results showed that the chemical nature of zinc oxides showed higher conversion (70.52%) at reaction temperature of 190 ºC, reaction time of 50 min, and 1 g catalyst weight used in the batch reactor. A kinetic model related to the sulfur removal from kerosene via ODS process in the batch reactor was also investigated in this study for the purpose of estimating the best kinetic parameters of the relevant reactions. The results showed that the prepared catalyst (ZnO over nano-alumina) can be applied confidently to reactor design, operation and control in addition to improve the fuel quality. Following the kinetic model of ODS process, a very well agreement between the experimental and predicted results is obtained. Copyright © 2019 BCREC Group. All rights reserved