Ultradeep oxidative desulfurization of heavy oil in oscillatory and laminar baffled reactors using polyactive magnetic activated carbon catalyst

New poly-active magnetic-activated carbon catalysts (5% MnO₂-X% Fe₂O₃/AC, X = 0-3) are developed to examine, for the first time, the integrated impact of varying magnetic loadings and manganese active species on the performance of catalytic oxidative desulfurization (ODS) of real heavy oil. Desulfurization reactions are conducted in a novel oscillatory baffled reactor (OBR) and a laminar flow baffled reactor (LFBR). Fast ODS is examined using a new basket central baffle in OBR to handle the solid catalyst for continuous operation and to provide easy regeneration and recyclability, compared to previous works that investigated only batch processes using solid catalytic materials in an oscillating reactor. Also, the desulfurization performance is examined in the presence (OBR) and absence (LFBR) of oscillatory mixing to investigate the importance of oscillatory parameters in enhancing mass transfer and sulfur oxidation rates. Sour heavy oil (8281 ppm of sulfur) is upgraded to produce ultraclean and eco-friendly fuel with only 30 ppm sulfur content using MFAC3 catalyst across a very short desulfurization time (12 min) under the best operational parameters (temperature of 90 °C, St of 0.103, Reo of 1168, Ren of 8.74, and Ψ of 133.6). The sulfur removal efficiency is decreased from 99.64% in OBR to 42.06% for LFBR in the absence of the oscillatory motion under the optimal conditions. This dramatic decrease indicates that the oscillatory mixing is the critical and controlling factor in producing eco-friendly fuel via ultradeep desulfurization. The new integrated catalytic system of oscillating reactor- poly-active magnetic-activated carbon catalyst is presented as a promising practical deep desulfurization technology under cost-effective consideration owing to the utilization of easily available and cheap carbonaceous catalyst across non-hydrogenation in the absence of expensive hydrogen gas and catalysts. Scalability of the new oscillating reactor can be directly achieved in the industrial refineries based on the dimensionless parameters of OBR while maintaining similar desulfurization performance.