Naphthenic acids are naturally occurring carboxylic acids in crude oil with cyclic or aromatic rings in their structure. These carboxylic acids are responsible for the acidity of crude oil, leading to corrosion problems in refinery equipment and the deactivation of catalysts while creating a continuous need for maintenance. Therefore, removing naphthenic acids has become an important requirement in refining acidic crude oil. In this paper, experiments are conducted to investigate the use of HZSM-5 zeolite catalyst to reduce the total acid number (TAN) of a typical acidic crude oil obtained from Al-Fula blocks in Western Sudan. TAN is an important metric signifying the acidity of crude oil. A full factorial design of the experiment (DOE) framework enabled a better understanding of the efficacy of the catalyst at three parametric levels (reaction temperature: 250-270-300 °C, reaction time: 2-3-4 h, and oil:catalyst weight ratio: 20-22-25 g/g). The results demonstrate that the HZSM-5 zeolite catalyst provides up to 99% removal of naphthenic acids via the decarboxylation route. Additionally, the removal efficiency increases with increasing temperature and residence time. The acidity of the crude oil was shown to decrease after treatment with the catalyst for four hrs.; from 6.5 mg KOH/g crude to 1.24; 0.39 and 0.17 mg KOH/g at 250; 270 and 300 °C, respectively. A sharp decrease of TAN was observed at the oil catalyst mass ratio of 20 g/g at 250 °C, and almost complete conversion of acids was achieved after 4 hrs. Another experiment at 270 °C showed a converse relationship between the oil:catalyst ratio and acid removal; suggesting the activation of side reactions at higher temperature conditions catalyzed by excess acid. Finally; a Langmuir–Hinshelwood (LH) kinetic model has been developed to enable rapid prediction of the performance of the HZSM-5 zeolite catalyst for decarboxylation reaction. The model has also been validated and tested in ASPEN® software for future simulation and scalability studies.
