Reduction in the amount of sulfur in waste oil using reactive molecular distillation. (18th July 2021) - Lopes, Melina Savioli
Abstract: Petroleum, contains proportions of contaminants such as sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen, and metals, such as nickel, iron, copper, sodium, and vanadium. Particularly, contaminants containing sulfur cause problems during handling, transportation, and the use of the their derivatives. This work had the goal of cracking the heavy crude oil molecules by reacting these molecules with tetralin and simultaneously promoting the separation of the low-mass and high-mass fractions, aiming to obtain a product of high value. The process to be studied is Reactive Molecular Distillation (RMD). It was developed at the laboratory LDPS-FEQ-UNCAMP, in order to perform the molecular distillation with chemical reaction using tetralin, which, at high temperatures (210 to 330 °C) and high vacuum (10-3 mmHg), suffers the cracking of molecules, providing protons that help the disaggregation of asphaltene; consequently, the residues will suffer physicochemical alterations and, therefore, the reduction in the amount of sulfur in the oil waste. The sample to be studied is a petroleum waste, named JU 560 °C. This oil is a residue from the vaccuum column of an oil distillery. With the processing of petroleum waste JU 560 °C with 5% of tetralin, a reduction of 49% in the sulfur content of the original sample was achieved.