Desulfurization of gas oil using a solar photocatalytic microreactor

Abstract

The present work is devoted to investigate the performance of a homemade Y-shape catalytic microreactor for degradation of dibenzothiophene (DBT), as a model of sulphur compounds including in gas oil, utilizing solar incident energy. The microchannel was coated with TiO2 nanoparticles which were used as a photocatalyst. Performance of the microreactor was investigated using different conditions (e.g., DBT concentration, LHSV, operating temperature, and (H₂O₂/DBT) ratio). Our experiments show that, in the absence of UV light, no reaction takes place. The results revealed that outlet concentration of DBT decreases as the mean residence time in the microreactor increases. Also, it was noted that operating temperature showed a positive impact on the degradation rate of DBT while LHSV showed a different image. The results reported an optimum (H₂O₂/DBT) ratio which gave maximum conversion of DBT which vary with initial concentration. Kinetic study was carried out which confirmed that desulfurization of DBT followed a pseudo-first order reaction at 30 and 50^oC, respectively. However deviation from linearity was observed at 60^oC. Comparison between microreactor´s performance and performance of batch reactors from published literature were illustrated. The Comparison confirmed the unique characteristics of the microreactor.