Adsorção de compostos sulfurados do gás natural por diferentes adsorventes e dessorção utilizando CO2 supercrítico

Abstract

Natural gas is extensively used in industries as well as in other sectors as an energy resource and, sometimes, it needs to undergo processes for the removal of impurities present in its composition. Among them are the sulfur compounds, which can cause damages to pipes and catalysts, making it necessary to develop and/or improve deep desulfurization methods. In this context, granular activated carbon was modified through two methods, oxidation using nitric acid, and impregnation using a ferric chloride solution. The resulting adsorbents were evaluated for their capacity of adsorbing seven sulfur compounds present in the synthetic natural gas sample, through their rupture curves. Afterwards, the adsorbents desorption was performed by using supercritical carbon dioxide under the conditions of 60°C at 100 bar, 150 bar and 200 bar. The results indicate that all the modification methods improved the sulfur compounds retention when compared to virgin activated carbon. The compound that had the greatest increase in the adsorption capacity after iron impregnation was the tert-butyl mercaptan (TBM), and with the activated carbon oxidized by HNO3 it was the dimethyl sulfide (DMS). Nevertheless, the supercritical conditions studied in the desorption stage were efficient only for the unmodified activated carbon. The adsorption capacities of both modified adsorbents after the regeneration were inferior to those capacities obtained in the first adsorption, then two hypotheses were investigated: (1) destruction of the newly created sites after regeneration; and (2) incomplete desorption in the studied supercritical conditions. Through other experiments it was proved that, after regeneration, there was no destruction of the newly created sites; therefore, further studies on the operating conditions are required in order to the modified adsorbents to achieve high regeneration capacities.