마이크로세공 분자체를 이용한 탄화수소에 포함된 황 화합물 제거

Abstract

Desulfurization of natural gas at ambient conditions before introduction to reforming processes is strongly needed for stationary applications of fuel cells, such as a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFC). The adsorptive removal of t-butylmercaptan(TBM) and tetrahydrothiophene(THT) in methane gas using Y and ETS-10 microporous molecular sieves was investigated at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure. The crystallinity, chemical composition and BET surface area of the metal-cation exchanged Y and ETS-10 were characterized by X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence analysis and nitrogen adsorption-isotherm measurements, respectively. Posterior to its treatment at 450 ℃ in an He atmosphere for 2 h, the Cu(II) in Cu-ETS-10-0.1(4) could be auto-reduced partially to Cu(I), as confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The preferential adsorption of THT over TBM on the alkali-metal exchanged Y and ETS-10, and the concurrent adsorption of TBM and THT on the copper exchanged Y and ETS-10 (Cu-NaY-0.5(4) and Cu-ETS-10-0.1(4)) have been achieved, which could be explained by the uptake curve in binary component adsorption, the temperature-programmed desorption and the apparent activation energy for desorption. The breakthrough capacity for both TBM and THT was 2.63 mmol/g and 2.50 mmol/g on Cu-NaY-0.5(4) and Cu-ETS-10-0.1(4), respectively. This is the best sulfur capacity reported thus far in removing organic sulfur compounds from hydrocarbon fuel gas by adsorption on microporous molecular sieves.