Deep desulfurization of diesel via peroxide oxidation using phosphotungstic acid as phase transfer catalyst

High sulfur level in diesel fuel has been identified as a major contributor to air pollutant in term of sulfur dioxide (SOx) through diesel fueled vehicles. The main aim of the present work is to develop a promising methodology for ultra deep desulfurization of diesel fuel using oxidation followed by phase transfer of oxidized sulfur. Experiments were carried out in a batch reactor using n-decane as the model diesel compound and also using commercial diesel feedstock. To remove sulfur tetraoctylammonium bromide, phosphotungstic acid, and hydrogen peroxide were used as phase transfer agent, catalyst and oxidant respectively. The percent sulfur removal increases with increasing the initial concentration of sulfur in fuel and with increasing the reaction temperature. Similar trends were observed when commercial diesel was used to carry out desulfurization studies. The amphiphilic catalyst serves as a catalyst and also as an emulsifying agent to stabilize the emulsion droplets. The effects of temperature, agitation speed, quantity of catalyst and the phase transfer agent were studied to estimate the optimal conditions for the reactions. The sulfur removal from a commercial diesel by phase transfer catalysis has been found effective and removal efficiency was more than 98%. Kinetic experiments carried out for the desulfurization revealed that the sulfur removal results are best fitted to a pseudo first order kinetics and the apparent activation energy of desulfurization was 30.6 kJ/mol.