Hydrotreating of Petroleum Vacuum Residue In Supercritical Aromatic Solvents with Activated Carbons

Hydrotreating of Petroleum Vacuum Residue in Supercritical Aromatic Solvents with Activated Carbons

Tran Tan Viet¹, Jae-Hyuk Lee¹, Il Yong Jeong², Jae Wook Ryu² and Chang-Ha Lee¹*

¹Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea

²Global Technology, SK Innovation, Daejun, Korea

TEL : +82-2-2123-2762,  FAX: +82-2-312-6401 , e-mail : leech@yonsei.ac.kr

Petroleum vacuum residue (VR) is the heaviest fraction of refine petroleum processes, which contains higher portions of asphaltene and higher concentration of contaminants such as sulfur, nitrogen, and heavy metals. Conversion of VR into light fraction without heteroatoms becomes important more and more in the refinery because of the short supply of light sweet crude oil as well as the steep increase of crude oil price.

In the study, the hydrotreating of VR in supercritical hydrocarbon solvents was conducted with activated carbon (AC) as a catalyst in batch reactor. Two kinds of supercritical hydrocarbon solvents were applied: n-alkanes (n-hexane and n-dodecane) and aromatic solvents (toluene and m-xylene).

Along with the conversion level and coke formation of hydrotreating VR reaction, the distribution of oil product (naphtha, middle distillate, vacuum gas oil and residue) in each supercritical hydrocarbon solvent was evaluated. The supercritical aromatic solvent gave much smaller naphtha fraction but higher middle distillate fraction than the supercritical n-alkanes did. It implies that the conversion level and product quality can be controlled by the selected supercritical solvent. In addition, the effect of hydrogen partial pressure and surface properties of AC on the hydrotreating VR reaction were also investigated.

Keyword: hydrotreating, vacuum residue, supercritical hydrocarbon solvent, activated carbon