Patent ID: 6855853

Claim:
A process for producing low benzene content gasoline corn rising the steps of: (a) feeding a full boiling range naphtha containing benzene, olefins, diolefins, mercaptans, thiophenes and other organic sulfur compounds to a distillation column wherein a light naphtha fraction is taken as overheads, a medium naphtha fraction containing said benzene is taken as a side draw and a heavy naphtha fraction is taken as a bottoms; (b) feeding said medium naphtha fraction containing said benzene and said thiophenes to a hydrogenation reactor containing a hydrogenation catalyst wherein a portion of said benzene is hydrogenated to cyclohexane and said thiophenes are converted to hydrogen sulfide; (c) combining said overheads, said bottoms and the effluent from said hydrogenation reactor to produce a gasoline lower in benzene content than said full boiling range naphtha feed; (d) feeding said overheads to a thioetherification react r containing a thioetherification catalyst wherein a portion of said diolefins are react d with a portion of said mercaptans to produce sulfides; (e) separating said sulfides from said overheads; (f) feeding said bottoms and hydrogen to a hydrodesulfurization reactor containing a hydrodesulfurization catalyst wherein a portion of said other organic sulfur compounds are reacted with hydrogen to produce hydrogen sulfide; and (g) separating said hydrogen sulfide from said bottoms.