Evaluation of commercial adsorbents and their application for desulfurization of model fuel

The removal of dibenzothiophene from model fuel was carried out by adsorption on commercially available adsorbents including an activated carbon, aluminum oxide, 13X and Y zeolite. Activated carbon was SOLCARB^TM C3 which was grinded from its original particle size 1.0–2.0 mm to the 0.40–0.80 mm, while aluminum oxide Selexsorb CDX, 13X zeolite MSE 13X and Y zeolite HSZ-320NAA were used in their as delivered particle size ranges of 2.7–3.0, 1.6, and 300–600 nm, respectively. Adsorption experiments were carried out in batch mode at 24.5 ± 0.7°C using model fuel comprising cyclo-hexane, n-heptane, n-octane and dibenzothiophene in the concentration range of 0.48–42.91 mg/g. The experimental data was used to compare applied adsorbents and to carry out equilibrium characterization and kinetic analysis of the adsorption process. The evaluation of the tested adsorbents showed that the best adsorptive performance was achieved by the Y zeolite. The analysis of the adsorption equilibrium data and the kinetic analysis showed that of the applied models the best fits to the experimental data were achieved by the Sips and Ritchie models, respectively.