Neutralization of acidic petroluem crude oil utilizing 2-methylimidazole liqiud with aid of Cu/Ce/Al2O3 catalyst / Hisyam Saufi Tajudin

Naphthenic acid (NA) present in crude oil leads to corrosion problems within oil
refineries. The objective of this study is to reduce total acid number (TAN) of
petroleum crude oil using 2-methytimidamle with the aid of Cu/Ce (l0:90)/Al2O3
catalyst through the catalytic deacidification technique. Catalytic deacidification
is a fascinating process to reduce the naphthenic acids (NAs) concentration of
acidic petroleum crude because these acids caused lower the quality of crude oils.
Petronas Penapisan Melaka (PPM) crude oil with original Total Acid Number
(TAN) of 2.43 mg KOH/g was used to test the performance of catalytic
deacidification A basic chemical with a dosing of 10% of 2-methytimidamle in
ethanol solution was used as the acid removal agent. Cerium oxide based catalysts
supported onto alumina prepared with different calcination temperatures of 800°C,
900°C and 1000°C. The potential catalyst was characterized by using TGA-DTG,
FTlR and XRD fur its physicochemical properties. The results showed TAN
reduced to 0.53 mg KOH/g with 78.2% reduction by using Cu/Ce (l0:90)/Al203
calcined at 900°C, 0.5% of catalyst loading (4 beads), reaction temperature at 27°C
and reaction times of 10 minutes. The small particle size of catalyst calcined at
900°C which is 18.02 mn lead to bigger surface areas that enhance the catalytic
deadicification process. These properties contributed to the excellent catalytic
performance which remove the NAs in the PPM crude oil and concurrently
reduced the TAN value below than one.