Desulfurization of the dibenzothiophene (DBT) using imidazoliumbased ionic liquids (ILs)

In this work we examined the industrial scale extraction process of ultra-low sulfur diesel with the help of simulation software ASPEN Plus®. This work focuses on the [Cnmim] [BF4] (imidazolium-based) ionic liquid and employed it in the extractive desulfurization of the dibenzothiophene (DBT) from the model diesel fuel under a very mild process condition. UNIFAC (uniquasi functional activity) was chosen as the thermodynamic method to model the ionic liquid on ASPEN Plus® and different physical and chemical properties were then taken from the literature to be incorporated in the simulation model. Different parametric analysis was studied for the removal of thiophene-based compounds from the model diesel. The results acquired shows the significance of imidazolium-based ionic liquids (ILs) for the extraction of S-contents from the liquid fuels at an optimal process conditions of 40 ℃ and 2 bar pressure with the 2.8: 1 ratio of ionic liquid and model diesel which validates the experimental results obtained previously in the literature.