Patent ID: 7927480

Claim:
A process for reducing the sulfur content of a hydrocarbon stream, the process comprising: feeding a pre-fractionated naphtha stream comprising organic sulfur compounds to a first catalytic distillation reactor system having one or more reaction zones comprising a hydrodesulfurization catalyst; feeding hydrogen to the first catalytic distillation reactor system; concurrently in the first catalytic distillation reactor system: fractionating the pre-fractionated naphtha stream into a heavy naphtha fraction and an intermediate naphtha fraction; contacting hydrogen and the intermediate naphtha fraction in at least one of the reaction zones to form hydrogen sulfide and an intermediate naphtha fraction of reduced organic sulfur content; contacting hydrogen and the heavy naphtha fraction in at least one of the reaction zones to form hydrogen sulfide and a heavy naphtha fraction of reduced organic sulfur content; recovering the intermediate naphtha fraction, hydrogen sulfide, and any unreacted hydrogen as a first overheads fraction; recovering the heavy naphtha fraction and dissolved hydrogen sulfide as a first bottoms fraction; stripping the hydrogen sulfide from the first overheads fraction; feeding the stripped first overheads fraction to a second catalytic distillation reactor system having one or more reaction zones comprising a hydrodesulfurization catalyst; feeding hydrogen to the second catalytic distillation reactor system; concurrently in the second catalytic distillation reactor system: fractionating the stripped first overheads fraction stream into a light intermediate naphtha fraction and a heavy intermediate naphtha fraction; contacting hydrogen and the light intermediate naphtha fraction in at least one of the reaction zones to form hydrogen sulfide and a light intermediate naphtha fraction of reduced organic sulfur content; contacting hydrogen and the heavy intermediate naphtha fraction in at least one of the reaction zones to form hydrogen sulfide and a heavy intermediate naphtha fraction of reduced organic sulfur content; recovering the light intermediate naphtha fraction, hydrogen sulfide, and any unreacted hydrogen as a second overheads fraction; recovering the heavy intermediate naphtha fraction as a second bottoms fraction; recycling at least a portion of the second bottoms fraction to the first catalytic distillation reactor system; stripping the hydrogen sulfide from the first bottoms fraction to recover a heavy naphtha fraction of reduced sulfur content; stripping the hydrogen sulfide from the second overheads fraction to recover a light intermediate naphtha fraction of reduced sulfur content.