Applied Chemistry

Biography

Biography: Luz Angela Carreño Díaz

Abstract

Environmental consequences of high consumption of fossil fuels containing significant amounts of sulfur compounds have promoted the study and research of new alternatives to remove these components in order to improve the quality of fuels in Colombia and generate least environmental impact. Nowadays, the most widely used process for removing sulfur compounds during refining is known as hydrodesulphurization, this process although has shown good results in the reduction of aliphatic organosulfur has drawbacks for removal of aromatic sulfur compounds. With the aim of proposing a treatment to be applied after the hydro treating, in this research desulphurization with an immobilized ionic liquid on active carbon has been tested on model mixes and enriched real commercial gasoline. The model mixes containing thiophene and benzothiophene at concentration of 500 ppm of sulfur were passed through a fix bed reactor containing the composite. The sulfur selective ionic liquid 1-Butyl-3-methylimidazolium tetra fluoroborate was immobilized on a solid matrix of activated carbon. Characterization of the material has been performed by FTIR, Raman, TGA, BET, and SEM. Desulfurization has shown that by using the composite is possible to reduce the sulfur concentration from 500 to 98 ppm using 0,300 g of solid per 5 ml of model gasoline. By using a solid material containing a selective ionic liquid immobilized on carbon active it is possible removal percentages of up to 80% of aromatic sulfur compounds with additional advantages of recyclability, reuse, less time consuming, and significantly less amount of IL.