Development of high-performance carbon-based adsorbent for selective denitrogenation of liquid hydrocarbon streams

Deep denitrogenation of liquid hydrocarbon streams is becoming an important subject in the petroleum refining industry for deep hydrodesulfurization, dearomatization and reforming and in upgrading of the liquid hydrocarbon distillate derived from coal liquefaction and pyrolysis. The conventional hydrodenitrogenation needs to be conducted at severe conditions with high hydrogen consumption. It is necessary to develop new approach to deep denitrogenation of the liquid hydrocarbon streams at more energy efficient, economical and environmentally friendly conditions. Adsorptive denitrogenation (ADN) of liquid hydrocarbon streams by using highly selective adsorbent has been attracting great attention, as the ADN process can be conducted at ambient conditions without hydrogen consumption. This presentation will report our current approach and progress in ADN on the developed carbon-based adsorbent, including analysis of nitrogen-containing compounds in different hydrocarbon streams, surface modification of activated carbon to improve ADN performance, regeneration of the spent adsorbent as well as the ADN mechanism.