Mesoporous Sorbents for Oxidative Desulfurization of JP-8

The major drawback to the use of fuel cells as electric generators and auxiliary power units (APUs) by deployed forces is their inability to directly use battlefield fuels. Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) require a clean, essentially sulfur-free feed stream to prevent poisoning of the anode catalyst. TDA Research, Inc. (TDA) proposes to develop a novel fuel desulfurization system, a key component of a compact fuel processor, to produce a sulfur-free feed for fuel cell power generators that run on high sulfur JP-8 fuel. TDA’s desulfurization system uses a catalyst to first oxidize the thiophenic sulfur species in the fuel to their respective sulfones and then to remove the oxidized sulfur compounds with a novel regenerable, mesoporous sorbent to deliver essentially sulfur-free fuel to the fuel processor. In Phase I, we demonstrated the successful operation of the catalyst and the sorbent and carried out an engineering analysis to show the technical feasibility of the concept.