Conventional and Upcoming Sulfur-Cleaning Technologies for Petroleum Fuel: A Review

Environmental regulations on the quality of liquid fuels continue to create more requirements to produce a near-to-zero sulfur content. The hydrodesulfurization process has a high running cost and suffers from incomplete removal of sulfur compounds, particularly alkylated dibenzothiophene. Recently, oxidative and adsorption desulfurization procedures showed high potential to take part in commercial desulfurization. The advantages and disadvantage of the newly proposed procedures are outlined and reviewed. Undoubtedly, adsorptive-based methods have achieved many advances in this area. Particularly, surface imprinted polymers and metal–organic frameworks have manifested an excellent tendency to remove bulky sulfur compounds with minimum experimental effort. This review presents information about the workability, efficiency, and mechanisms of the current desulfurization methodologies for diesel as a common transportation fuel. More attention is given to adsorptive desulfurization as a promising technology.