ADSORPTIVE DESULFURIZATION OF DIESEL FUELS BY OXIDATION-MODIFIED ACTIVATED CARBONS

摘要

Deep desulfurization of liquid hydrocarbon fuels has become an increasingly important subject worldwide. The sulfur content in the transportation fuels is a very serious environmental concern because sulfur in fuel is converted to toxic SOx and contributes to acid rains. SOx also poisons the catalysts for exhaust emission treatment in vehicles. On the other hand, liquid hydrocarbon fuels are also promising fuels for producing H2 for automotive, portable and resident fuel cells (1-3). Selective adsorption for desulfurization over solid adsorbents is one of the promising approaches for producing ultra-low-sulfur fuels (1). As diesel fuel contains not only sulfur compounds and nitrogen compounds but also aromatic compounds that have skeleton structure similar to the sulfur compounds, a great challenge is to develop an advanced adsorbent, which can selectively adsorb the sulfur compounds. Our previous studies showed that both porous structure and surface chemistry of activated carbons (ACs) play an important role in determining their adsorption performance (4, 5).