Experimental Study of Catalytic Oxidative Desulfurization Process for Real Fuels Using Taguchi Design Approach

In this paper, desulfurization of gasoline and gasoil samples by oxidation method using hydrogen peroxide as the oxidant and molybdenum and tungsten catalysts of polyoxometalate type were investigated. The effects of various operational variables such as 4 types of catalysts, 4 levels of hydrogen peroxide to sulfur mole ratio, and 4 reaction temperature levels on 4 real fuels were analyzed using the Taguchi design of experiment. The results showed that tungsten and molybdenum catalysts of polyoxometalate type on supports like KSF and K10 montmorillonite exhibited suitable performance and stability for the oxidation of real fuels. The predicted removal of sulfur compounds in the optimal conditions of the Taguchi method (PW/K10 catalyst, temperature of 75°C, oxidant to sulfur compound mole ratio of 14) for the gasoline model after the HDS process was reported to be 69.04%. Under these optimal conditions, the experiments were repeated three times for the gasoline model oil, and the average sulfur compound removal of 70.33% was reported. The ANOVA analysis indicated a coefficient of determination R2 value of 0.987 for the model.