The regional gasoline markets of North America and Western Europe are the largest in the world, accounting for more than 60 percent of global gasoline demand. Western Europe consumed 125 million tons and North America 430 million tons in 2001. Refinery fuel specifications in these areas hence have a major impact on global gasoline quality. The driver for the mandate of tighter gasoline quality specifications is to enable the introduction of advanced vehicle exhaust technology that can achieve significant reductions in emissions. Such technology is reliant on gasoline being effectively "sulfur free", with a sulfur content of less than 10 ppmw. By virtue of this requirement and the capabilities of the after-treatment technologies, all other fuel specifications become secondary. The figure below illustrates that towards the end of the decade, most major gasoline markets are expected to be effectively "sulfur free". These trends are likely to spread to developing countries, although the rate of change will be slower. MAXIMUM PERMITTED SULFUR LEVELS IN GASOLINE
(ppmw levels - current and Nexant's projections)
 The change in gasoline specifications typically necessitates investments in production facilities. These investments need to be economically viable which is not always possible with current equipment and technologies. Conventional desulfurization technology, although capable of deep sulfur removal, does not necessarily provide an economically attractive solution to achieve such low specifications, so new processes are being developed and commercialized. This report considers technical and commercial issues concerning new processes that can meet the requirements of low sulfur gasoline specifications. As most of sulfur in the overall refinery gasoline pool originates from the fluid catalytic cracker naphtha (FCC naphtha), the majority of new developments address the problem of how to reduce the sulfur content of this stream. This PERP report hence only focuses on new desulfurization technologies to process FCC naphtha. The list below summarizes Nexant's assessment of seven emerging technologies for the desulfurization of FCC naphtha. PROCESSES CONSIDERED IN THIS REPORT AND THEIR KEY FEATURES
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