Demercaptanization of Distillate ( DMD ).docVIP

17 Petroleum Coal ISSN 1337-7027 Available online at www.vurup.sk/pc Petroleum Coal 46 (1), 17-22, 2004 Demercaptanization of Distillate ( DMD ) Khashayar Mohammadbeigi , Morteza Tajerian* Research Institute of Petroleum Industry , Tehran , Iran tajerianm@ripi.ir Received 16 August 2004;received in revised form 18 October 2004; accepted 28 October 2004 Abstract Sulfur compounds and mercaptans in hydrocarbon and petroleum cuts lead to environmental pollution and corrosion problems in pipelines and storage tanks. So it is necessary to decrease sulfur and mercaptans concentrations in hydrocarbon cuts to international standard levels in petroleum industries. For this purpose, DMD process has been developed as a demercaptanization process providing the possibility of demercaptanization of different hydrocarbon cuts even crude oil as a feed. In this article, experimental results of different oil feeds sweetening have been presented by using DMD process. Also the optimum conditions of this reaction have been determined by examination of effective factors. The results of this research show that DMD process has the high capability of decreasing of mercaptans and sulfur compounds in hydrocarbon cuts up to environmental standards. Key words: Demercaptanization, sweetening, DMD process Introduction different environmental operation problems [1-3]. Sulfur compounds are undesirable group of impurities decreased to the international levels by using proper methods. in oil cuts, which must be In recent years, DMD process has been developed as a proper sweetening method. In this process, Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is separated from hydrocarbon cut by a diluted Hydroxide solution (1-2 wt%). following this equation (1): This operation is called, “sweetening process”. Sulfur in hydrocarbon cuts has different forms such as element sulfur (S) (H2S),