AROMATICS REMOVAL FROM NAPHTHA The objective of this study was the development of a separation technology for the selective recovery and purification of aromatic compounds benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX) from liquid ethylene cracker feeds. Most ethylene cracker feeds contain 10 – 25% of aromatic components, depending on the source of the feed (naphtha or gas condensate). The aromatic compounds are not converted to olefins and even small amounts are formed during the cracking process in the cracker furnaces. Therefore, they occupy a part of the capacity of the furnaces and they put an extra load on the separation section of the C5+- aliphatic compounds. If a major part of the aromatic compounds present in the feed to the crackers could be separated up stream of the furnaces, it would offer several advantages: higher capacity, higher thermal efficiency and less fouling. The current processes for the separation of aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons are either suitable for aromatic concentrations of 20% or more, such as extraction, extractive distillation and azeotropic distillation, or show low aromatic/aliphatic selectivities and/or have low capacities. Therefore, it was investigated, whether and how the performance of adsorption/desorption, membrane separation and extraction could be drastically improved at low aromatics content by using new separating agents. After a short literature study, adsorption/desorption was discarded for further work because potentially suitable zeolite adsorbents, for instance X and Y types, would result in tremendous technical problems during desorption and its scale up to large capacities appeared unfavourable.