Author: vjohn at nsf18 Date: 7/20/98 10:17 AM Priority: Normal TO: adthomas Subject: abstract - 9817221 Green Message Contents Abstract Proposal No: 9817221 Proposal Type: EPA-NSF Joint Initiative, 1998 Principal Investigator: William Green Affiliation: Massachusetts Institute of Technology This grant is awarded through the Separations and Purification Program sub-element of the Interfacial, Transport and Separations Program of the Chemical and Transport Systems Division. The principal investigator is Dr. William Green at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. New technology is developed to remove sulfur compounds from gasoline and fuel oils. Traditionally, sulfur removal is done through catalytic technologies using hydrodesulfurization catalysts. The alternate route studied here involves the selective binding of these compounds to functionalized magnetic particles. These functional moieties attached to the magnetic particles are either polymers and/or surfactants adsorbed onto the particle surface. Various schemes for the selective extraction of the sulfur compounds onto the particles are considered. The final objective is incorporation of the sulfur compounds into the adsorbed layers of the particles. The particles are then removed through a magnetic field gradient, regenerated and cycled back. This technology of sulfur removal could be extremely cost effective since it does not involve high temperature reaction or multiphase extraction. The application of such technology could result in a paradigm shift for the petroleum and fuel processing industries.
