TROUBLESHOOTING A PROPANE DESULFURIZATION PLANT TOWARD ULTRA LOW SULFUR PRODUCTION

Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) should comply with legislation concerning low sulfur content (less than 10 ppm wt.) before being used as an automotive fuel. Mercaptans and hydrogen sulfide are the most significant sulfur compounds which should be mandatory removed from any transportation fuel. To do such a task, using selective catalytic oxidation (SCO) process followed by TSA (temperature swing adsorption) process can be an appropriate option to removesuch odorous and harmful compounds. In this paper, a commercial scale selective catalytic oxidation (SCO) plant followed by adsorption (as a case study) is studied. At first, it is shown that the presence of water and sulfur compounds in the product stream of the target propanedesulfurization plant is due to the desulfurization section installed before the adsorption unit. So, to tackle with this problem, the molecular sieve of the adsorption tower is replaced with a synthetic zeolite of X-type. Results has shown that this revamp can successfully remove all undesired compounds from the final product such to meet all universal standards

Keywords:

Desulfurization , Molecular Sieve , Disulphide