Removal of Sulphides and Benzene in Fluid Catalytic Cracking Gasoline by Insitu Hydrogenation Over NbFAPSO-5

Niobium containing aluminophosphate molecular sieve (NbFAPSO-5) was hydrothermally synthesized with AlPO-5 type structure. Characterization of this catalyst was performed by X-ray diffraction to determine its structure, inductive coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) for its elemental composition and infrared spectrometry (IR) to access its acidic properties. X-ray diffraction patterns confirmed well AlPO-5 type structure. ICP-AES analysis confirmed the incorporation of silicon (12.9%), aluminium (15.4%), phosphorous (21.9%), iron (5.62%) and niobium (0.39%) into AlPO-5 framework. Infrared spectrometry analysis showed that both Bronsted and Lewis sites were found in the synthesized sample. A fixed-bed reactor was used to investigate the activity of the resulting catalysts in the removal of sulfides and benzene in fluid catalytic cracking gasoline. Under suitable conditions of a metal loading of 15%, a reaction temperature of 423K, a reaction time of 30 min, a space velocity of 3 h-1, and a reaction pressure of 1 MPa; desulfurization and debenzolization ratios reach 100% and 19.9% respectively. Research octane number of the gasoline increased by two units. This remarkable behavior makes NbFAPSO-5 family, a potential candidate for industrial application as catalysts in the clean fuel.