Extraction of Fuel Impurities Using Deep Eutectic Solvents as Liquid-Liquid Extractive Agents

Abstract

Fuels are considered to be a major environmental pollutant as they are rich in aromatics, sulfur-containing, and nitrogen-containing aromatics that are burnt to produce air pollutants such as COx, SOx, and NOx. Thus, it is of immense importance to purify fuels as their composition could highly impact the environment as well as human health. Industrially, the purification and removal of aromatics, sulfur-containing, and nitrogen-containing aromatics is achieved via catalytic hydrotreatment. Despite the workability of this process, it has many drawbacks, including (1) severe temperature and pressure operating conditions (600–700 K; 20–150 bar), (2) excessive hydrogen consumption,(3) produces toxic by-products (i.e. H2S and NH3), (4) uses expensive catalysts, and (5) reduces the products' cetane number due to hydrocracking side reactions. In the context of an increasing concern about the global energy demand, a lot of attention is given to the development of less energy consuming and more environmentally friendly processes. Thus, aiming to reduce the energy requirements of this separation, decrease environmental pollution and promote a more sustainable economic development, liquid-liquid extraction using green solvents, namely Deep Eutectic Solvents (DESs), is proposed in this work. Based on the literature, DESs have been proven to be promising candidates for the removal of aromatics or heteroaromatics 'sulfur-/nitrogen- containing aromatics' from fuels. However, most studies investigated the removal of a single fuel impurity (e.g. aromatics or heteroaromatics) from n-alkanes. Thus, to more realistically represent a process that simulates the treatment of both types of aromatics, this work investigates the application of DESs in simultaneous dearomatization, desulfurization, and denitrogenation of fuels.

Date of Award	May 2020
Original language	American English