Gasoline upgrading process

摘要

Low sulfur gasoline is produced from a catalytically cracked, sulfur-containing naphtha by fractionating the naphtha feed into a low boiling fraction in which the majority of the sulfur is present in the form of mercaptans and a high-boiling fraction in which the sulfur is predominantly in non-mercaptan form such as thiophenes. The low boiling fraction is desulfurized by a non-hydrogenative mercaptan extraction process which retains the olefins which are present in this fraction. The second fraction is desulfurized by hydrodesulfurization, which results in some saturation of olefins and loss of octane. The octane loss is restored by treatment over an acidic catalyst, preferably an intermediate pore size zeolite such as ZSM-5, to form a low sulfur gasoline product with an octane number comparable to that of the feed naphtha but which contains some recombined sulfur in the form or mercaptans which are removed in the non-hydrogenative mercaptan extraction step.