Desulfurization of gas oil using a solar photocatalytic microreactor

The desulfurization of dibenzothiophene (DBT) was studied in a homemade Y-shape catalytic microreactor utilizing solar incident energy. The microchannel was coated with TiO2 nanoparticles. Performance of the microreactor was investigated using different conditions (e.g., DBT concentration, LHSV, operating temperature, and (H2O2/DBT) ratio). Our experiments show that, in the absence of UV light, no reaction takes place. The results revealed that outlet concentration of DBT decreases as the mean residence time in the microreactor increases. Also, it was noted that operating temperature has a positive impact on the degradation rate of DBT while LHSV showed a different image. The results reported an optimum (H2O2/DBT) ratio which gave maximum conversion of DBT. Kinetic study was carried out which confirmed that desulfurization of DBT followed a pseudo-first order reaction at 30 and 50 degrees C, respectively. However deviation from linearity was observed at 60 degrees C. Comparison between microreactor's performance and performance of batch reactors from published literature were illustrated. The Comparison confirmed the unique characteristics of the microreactor. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.