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Abstract
Particularly large surface area and well-defined nanoparticles are both critical in the issue of nonporous carbons for challenging energy, catalyst and environmental fields. Therefore, following the ecological regulations regarding the quality of fuels, the environment agency calls for sulfur free fuels. In parallel, the presence of metals species in feedstock is deleterious for the various processes in the refinery plants. In this study, the carbon nanospheres (CNSs) were synthesized by burning condensate gas. The results showed that CNSs have a higher surface area and it was chosen as an adsorbent surface to remove sulfur-compound and metals from transportation fuels. The CNSs were examined by FTIR, XRD, SEM-EDX, HRTEM, TGA, FTIR, XRD and Raman spectroscopy. Actual diesel (541 ppm) and fuel marine (267 ppm) desulfurization and demetallization via adsorption have been investigated. As a result, the total sulfur-content could be decreased after oxidation/adsorption to 66 ppm and 1 ppm at optimal conditions for diesel and marine fuel, respectively. Furthermore, metal ions contents were also treated according to the same procedure and the demetallization performance decreased in the order vanadium, nickel and iron. This simple adsorption method can be applied to any refining process as pre- or post-treatment of commercial transportation fuels.