(74a) Design of Ionic Liquid Solvents for Extractive Desulfurization

Sulfur present in fuels leads to SOx generation, which is a major air pollutant. The design of safe and environmentally benign desulfurization processes has an increasingly important role in all oil and gas producing countries. Conventional hydrodesulfurization processes are effective in removing sulfur compounds. However, they have two disadvantages: 1) building new units is expensive and 2) octane number is reduced for gasoline due to olefin saturation. In this work quantum mechanical calculations are used to design ionic liquid solvents for efficient extraction of sulfur compounds from gasoline and diesel fuel. The selectivity and capacity of the solvents are calculated for all major sulfur and hydrocarbon compounds present in the fuels. We were able to identify a few ionic liquids with capacity and selectivity much better than the ionic liquids suggested in the open literature. Preliminary experimental work confirms the results obtained form the computational method.