Deep Desulfurization of Diesel and JP-8 Using Novel Adsorbents

"Power generation using fuel cells is an attractive option for military and commercial applications. In particular, the military is interested in generating hydrogen from JP-8 fuels as it represents a logistic fuel. A main bottleneck in processing JP-8 anddiesel fuels is the fact that these fuels contain refractory sulfur compounds such as thiophenes and alkyl and substituted thiophenes. Hydrogen generation using untreated logistic fuels is not practical due to the fact these sulfur compounds causeirreversible catalyst deactivation both in the fuel processor and in the anode of the PEM fuel cell. The industrial desulfurization process requires pure hydrogen to remove sulfur compounds, and is conducted at high temperature and pressure. Thiscommercial route is therefore not suited for fuel cell applications.We propose to develop and validate tailored inexpensive adsorbents to remove sulfur from logistic fuels at mild operating conditions. These adsorbents are created by chemically bonding specific functional groups onto the surface of activated carbon. Byselecting the appropriate functional groups, high-capacity adsorption of sulfur-bearing compounds can be achieved. We will demonstrate these adsorbents, combined in our MesoChannelT Adsorber will yield a compact, simple and efficient method for sulfurremoval that requires no hydrogen and potentially field-regenerable. A compact, efficient and inexpensive system for removing sulfur fro