Adsorption behavior of light naphtha components on zeolite (5a)‎ and activated carbon

Abstract EN

Light naphtha is one of the products from distillation column in oil refineries used as feedstock for gasoline production.

The major constituents of light naphtha are (Normal Paraffin, Isoparaffin, Naphthene, and Aromatic).

In this paper, we used zeolite (5A) with uniform pore size (5A) to separate normal paraffin from light naphtha, due to the suitable pore size for this process and compare the behavior of adsorption with activated carbon which has a wide range of pores size (micropores and mesopores) and high surface area.

The process is done in a continuous system- Fixed bed column- at the vapor phase with constant conditions of flow rate 5 ml/min, temperature 180oC, pressure 1.6 bar and 100-gramweight of each adsorbent according to many other experiments on zeolite (5A) and choose the best conditions for comparison.

The molecular sieve (5A) separated the normal paraffin (C4 – C8 ) from light naphtha feed with highest percentage removal reaching a (92.36 %) at the beginning of the process.

Activated carbon separated naphthene and aromatics with highest percentage removal reaching a (95.3 %) for naphthenes and a (100 %) for aromatics at the beginning of the separation process.

The study shows the difference in physical adsorption behavior and the effect of pore size on these processes.