Improvement of desulfurization capacity of nickel-based adsorbent for jet fuel by adding alkanol

Nickel-based adsorbents have shown great promise for removing sulfur from jet fuels to the low levels required by fuel cells. But, one problem with this type of adsorbent is the difficulty in regeneration, so increasing the capacity of these adsorbent can be highly beneficial. One way to increase the capacity of the nickel-based adsorbent is to add an alkanol to the fuel which acts as a hydrogen donor and aids in the C-S cleavage. Three alkanols, methanol, ethanol and water, were tested on the same conditions to determine if they had any effect of the sulfur removal capacity. Surprisingly, the largest increase in capacity was found by adding the least amount of methanol to the fuel, only 0.5 wt%. Adding 1 wt% methanol had very little effect on capacity compared to straight JP-8.