Investigation of influential parameters in oxidative desulfurization of Indonesia's diesel fuel with methanol solvent and formic acid catalyst.

Sulphur compound on diesel fuels will cause negative effect on financial, health, and environmental aspects. Sulphur content in diesel fuels in Indonesia is still at high number compared to the international standard. Oxidative desulfurization is a method to reduce Sulphur content with low temperature and low pressure, making it cost less to operate than other method. There has been many research that study the use of ODS with variations of oxidizing agent, catalyst, and solvent used. This research will study the effect of important parameter for the ODS system such as oxidation temperature, extraction time and solvent amount with oxidizing agent of hydrogen peroxide, formic acid catalyst, and methanol solvent which have best result according to the previous study for diesel fuels from Indonesia. The oxidation process will be conducted in stirred container with temperature of 30 to 70 °C. After the oxidation, extraction with methanol solvent will be conducted to separate Sulphur from diesel. To determine ODS efficiency, Sulphur content of diesel will first be analyzed with FTIR and ASTM-D. From the research, the highest desulfurization obtained is 70% that reduce 380 ppm of Sulphur to 106 ppm of Sulphur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]