comparison between countercurrent and cocurrent streams in tbr for hydrotreating of gas oil

Catalytic hydrotreating (hdt) is a mature process technology practiced in the petroleum refining industries to treat oil fractions for the removal of impurities (such as sulfur, nitrogen, metals, asphaltene)# this study developed a gas oil trickle-bed hydrotreating reactor with counter-current and co-current streams using a heterogeneous model# the differential equations were solved numerically and concentration of sulfur compounds was obtained versus reactor length# finally, concentration of sulfur, aromatic, nitrogen compounds along the reactor length was compared for counter-current and co-current configurations# our simulations show that counter-current operation can significantly reduce the amount of sulfur and aromatic compunds more than the co-current stream#