Estudo termodinamico do equilibrio liquido-liquido visando a remoção do enxofre do oleo diesel com liquidos ionicos / Thermodynamic study of liquid-liquid equilibrium aiming sulfur removal by using ionic liquids

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2009

RESUMO

The sulfur contaminants more difficult to remove from diesel oil by hydrodesulfuration process (HDS) are the sterically hindered aromatic compounds, like dibenzothiophene (DBT), and its alkylated derivatives 4-methyl-dibenzothiophene (4-MDBT) and 4,6-dimethyl-dibenzothiophene (4,6-DMDBT), commonly called DBTs. Increasing the number of methyl groups attached in DBT molecule, the conventional HDS process becomes more difficult, more costly and less secure, because it uses H2 at high pressures and temperatures. Complementary processes for removal of these compounds, which are economically viable and safer are very attractive. In general, these processes operate at atmospheric pressure and temperatures lower than 100 °C. The most cited are the oxidesulfurization, ODS, which is the oxidation of sulfur contaminants to sulfoxides and sulfones; the biodesulfurization, BDS, which uses microorganisms to decompose the contaminants and remove sulfur; and the extractive desulfurization, EDS, which performs the extraction of sulfur contaminants with a suitable solvent. About EDS, in the literature, there are extraction data to remove DBTs from real and/or model oils, using mainly ionic liquids (ILs) as solvent. These works mainly deal with extraction operating conditions, such as number of steps and final content of sulfur in diesel fuel. So far, thermodynamic data of real systems and models of diesel, for example, Lis + DBTs + n-dodecane are inexistent in the literature. Therefore, the objective of this study is to tackle the EDS by a thermodynamic point of view, obtaining, mainly, liquid-liquid equilibrium data (LLE) for model diesel oil + aromatic sulfurous compound + solvent systems. Six systems of this type were studied at 25 and 40 °C and atmospheric pressure of about 95.0 kPa. As model oil n-dodecane was used; as aromatic sulfurous compound, DBT, 4-MDBT and 4,6-DMDBT were used; as solvents, the ionic liquids 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium diethylphosphate ([emim][DEtPO4]) and 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium ethylsulfate ([emim][EtSO4]). Because they are very hygroscopic, the ionic liquids studied were subjected to pressure below 8 kPa (60 mmHg) at 50 °C under magnetic stirring to reduce the moisture and volatile content. Moisture levels below 500 ppm were obtained by Karl Fischer titration. For all systems, binodal curves were determined by cloud point method; and tie lines, by refractometry. The system water + phenol + 1-butanol at 25 ° C was used to validate the techniques. ELL data were correlated with the NRTL model for calculating the activity coefficient, which showed mean square deviation less than 0,15% for all systems. The equations of Hand and Othmer-Tobias has an R2 >0.95 for all cases. The diagrams of solute distribution between two phases, of selectivity of solvents and removal percent of sulfur indicates that the [emim][DEtPO4] is better solvent than [emim][EtSO4] for extracting DBT, or 4-MDBT or 4,6-DMDBT from n-dodecane

ASSUNTO(S)

liquidos ionicos equilibrio liquido-liquido ionic liquids liquid-liquid equilibrium dessulfuração desulfurization

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