Kinetics of the UDHDS Process: A Lumped Parameter Approach

The Indian Auto Fuel Policy aims at limiting sulfur in diesel to 50 ppm by 2010 in selected cities. The Ultra Deep Hydrodesulfurisation (UDHDS) catalyst was developed to meet this objective. The performance of this catalyst compares well with a commercial reference catalyst. This study focused on UDHDS kinetic studies using straight run gas oil (SRGO) as a feedstock. Data analysis shows that UDHDS follows second-order kinetics with an effective activation energy of 26.75 kcal/mol. A rate law was proposed based on the estimated kinetic parameters which should be useful for scale-up of a UDHDS process.