Wong, Michael S2019-07-172019-07-172019-082019-06-25August 201Samaniego Andrade, Samantha Kathiuska. "Gas Chromatography Study of Sulfur Removal from Jet Fuel Using Nanoporous Materials." (2019) Master’s Thesis, Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/106153">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/106153</a>.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/106153Adsorptive desulfurization has been studied as a promising process to produce low-sulfur liquid fuels that achieve more stringent regulations. Although the process has proved to be effective to remove sulfur compounds from liquid fuels, a deep understanding of how the desulfurization occurs is still missing. In this work, gas chromatography coupled with Pulsed Flame Photometric Detector, GC-PFPD, is used to analyze the sulfur content of Jet Fuel samples before and after adsorptive desulfurization using nanoporous adsorbents at different temperatures (30℃ - 180℃). The work aims to investigate if the adsorptive removal is selective to a certain fraction of sulfur compounds in the matrix of Jet Fuel. Also, the effect of temperature on the sulfur removal is studied. It was observed that on jet fuel, sulfur removal increases with temperature, reaching the highest sulfur removal at 180℃ when using CuNa-Y zeolite (Dias da Silva, Samaniego Andrade, Zygourakis, & Wong, 2019). Sequential desulfurization experiments were done to see if the adsorbent can remove all sulfur compounds from jet fuel. At first, selectivity for the lighter sulfur compounds was observed, but after 4 desulfurization steps, all sulfur compounds were removed. This showed the adsorbent can remove all types of sulfur compounds in the matrix of jet fuel no matter their size. Additionally, other materials were tested to evaluate their performance at desulfurization of jet fuel. The materials of choice were three metal organic frameworks (MOFs); the first one is UiO-66, and the other two materials were a modified version of UiO-66, named UiO-66-10 and UiO-66-25, which were prepared with a higher content of hydrochloric acid (HCl), 10% and 25% respectively, to create defects in the structure of the pristine UiO-66. UiO-66 was selected for this work because of its high porosity and for having a pore size bigger than that of CuNa-Y zeolite. In the series of UiO-66 materials, UIO-66-10 showed the best sulfur removal which also increased with increasing temperature, reaching its maximum capacity at 180℃. However, CuNa-Y zeolite still achieves a higher sulfur capacity than UIO-66-10. All the treated samples were analyzed through GC-PFPD to check on any change in the sulfur matrix of jet fuel. In the case of UIO-66 materials, selectivity towards lighter sulfur compounds was observed and this increases as the temperature of treatment increases. This behavior was also observed for the samples treated with CuNa-Y zeolite.application/pdfengCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.Gas chromatographypulsed flame photometric detectorJP-8adsorptive desulfurizationnanoporous adsorbents.Thesis2019-07-17