Seminar - Teh C. Ho

Annuitant, Corporate Strategic Research Labs, ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co.,

Teh C. Ho

Annuitant, Corporate Strategic Research Labs

ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Co.,

Annandale, NJ

Deep Hydrodesulfurization of Hydrocarbon Fuels: Catalysis and Engineering

 

Abstract

Driven by the ever-mounting public demand for clean fuels, sulfur removal from hydrocarbon fuels has received and will continue to attract much attention in the coming years. Great strides have been made in the discovery and development of new catalysts for deep hydrodesulfurization (HDS). Conventional HDS catalysts are alumina-supported molybdenum sulfide promoted by Co and Ni. The active sites on HDS catalysts are required to perform two basic functions: hydrogenation and hydrogenolysis. This talk addresses limiting factors bearing on the catalytic chemistry in deep HDS. Among the topics are reactivity-property relationships, organonitrogen (N) inhibiting effects, nature of active sites, and quantification of active sites via transient experiments. It turns out that producing ultra-low sulfur fuels amounts to balancing two conflicting requirements: high hydrogenation function and high resilience to N inhibition. This finding provides a rational basis for ultra-low sulfur catalyst and process development, leading to the commercialization of the first unsupported metal sulfide catalyst for deep HDS.  

Bio
Teh C. Ho received a B. S. degree from Tunghai University in Taiwan and a Ph.D. from the University of Delaware, both in Chemical Engineering. He worked on selective oxidation of hydrocarbons at Halcon R&D Corporation for four years and then joined Exxon’s Corporate Research Labs in 1980. He retired from ExxonMobil after 34 years of R&D in hydrocarbon processing. He received AIChE’s Wilhelm and Evans Awards and is a member of National Academy of Engineering.