1 .

ABSTRACT
There is a worldwide trend to improve the quality of diesel for combating environmental
pollution. A sulfur content of 0.05% wt or less in diesel is being used in many countries of the
world. This sulfur level is likely to be further reduced to 50 ppmw in European countries.
Keeping this worldwide trend. sulfur content of the diesel in our country too has been reduced to
0.25%wt which is likely to be further reduced to 0.05 %wt in near future, In order to meet this
challenge many refineries in our country have put up diesel hydrotreating plants. BPCL is also
using this technology to remove sulphur from diesel. This is achived by the use of
Hydrodesulfurization (HDS) technique. It is a catalytic chemical process widely used to
remove sulfur (S) from natural gas and from refined petroleum products such as gasoline or
petrol, jet fuel, kerosene, diesel fuel, and fuel oils. The purpose of removing the sulfur is to
reduce the sulfur dioxide (SO
2
) emissions that result from using those fuels in
automotive vehicles, aircraft, railroad locomotives, ships, gas or oil burning power plants,
residential and industrial furnaces, The industrial hydrodesulfurization processes include
facilities for the capture and removal of the resulting hydrogen sulfide (H
2
S) gas. In petroleum
refineries, the hydrogen sulfide gas is then subsequently converted into byproduct elemental
sulfur or sulfuric acid. In an industrial hydrodesulfurization unit, such as in a refinery, the
hydrodesulfurization reaction takes place in a fixed-bed reactor at elevated temperatures ranging
from 300 to 400 C and elevated pressures ranging from 30 to 130 atmospheres of absolute
pressure, typically in the presence of a catalyst consisting of an alumina base impregnated
with cobalt and molybdenum. The liquid feed is pumped up to the required elevated pressure and
is joined by a stream of hydrogen-rich recycle gas. The resulting liquid-gas mixture is preheated
by flowing through a heat exchanger and preheater and finally send to a fixed bed reactor where
the desulphurization reaction takes place. In this project we have studied the process description
in detail and finally we are going to design major equipment such as reactor, heat exchanger,
pumps and valves used in this unit.