Costs to reduce the sulphur content of diesel fuel

Report no. 10/89: This study examines the consequences to refineries of making step-wise reductions in the sulphur content of diesel fuel from 0.26 to 0.05% wt. The EC-12's 95 refineries have been grouped into four categories for the purposes of representing process configurations and studying changes using computer LP models With the reduction of diesel fuel sulphur, increasing amounts of new high pressure (60+ bar) desulphurization capacity would be required.

This would increase significantly in the region of0.10% wt, although this breakpoint differs for different countries and refineries. To meet 0.05% wt sulphur in diesel fuel for EC-12 over the range of cases studied would require capital expenditure of 3000 to4300 M$ and lead to an increase in total manufacturing costs of 12to 18 $/t diesel fuel Some 0.8 to 1 Mt/yr of additional refinery energy consumption would be required to meet the 0.05% rather than the 0 2% wt sulphur content level with a consequent increase in CO₂ emissions.