Investigation on gasoline deep desulfurization for fuel cell applications

The effect of adding some amounts of cerium into Zn-Fe-O/Al2O3 sorbent on its performance of removal of organic sulfur compounds from gasoline by adsorption was studied in this paper. It showed that the ideal compositions for the preparation of Zn-Fe-Ce-O/Al2O3 consisted of 4.54 wt.% ZnO, 2.25 wt.% Fe2O3 and 2.5 wt.% CeO2, respectively, shortened as AZFC0.52. Further study indicated that this sorbent could be well regenerated at 250 °C with gas mixtures containing 6.0 vol.% steam + air and 2400 ml h−1 ml−1 gas space velocity. At those regenerated conditions and 60 °C adsorption temperature, the AZFC0.52 sorbent had better desulfurization stability, which was confirmed by typical characterization results using BET, XRD and SEM apparatus. This implied that the AZFC0.52 sorbent could be an ideal sorbent for removal of organic sulfur compounds from gasoline.