Title: Laboratory and commercial investigation of ebullated bed residue hydrocracking performance during processing of Urals crude vacuum resid and its blends with vacuum gas oil and atmospheric residue

Authors: Dicho S. Stratiev; Rosen D. Dinkov; Ivelina K. Shishkova; Ekaterina V. Nikolaychuk; Magdalena S. Mitkova; Radoslava Nikolova; Dobromir Yordanov; Ivailo Tankov; Wessel Ijlstra; David McNamara; Hong Duc Nguyen; Stéphane Chapot

Addresses: LUKOIL Neftochim Burgas JSC, Burgas, 8104, Bulgaria ' LUKOIL Neftochim Burgas JSC, Burgas, 8104, Bulgaria ' LUKOIL Neftochim Burgas JSC, Burgas, 8104, Bulgaria ' LUKOIL Neftochim Burgas JSC, Burgas, 8104, Bulgaria ' Burgas University 'Assen Zlatarov', 1, Prof. Yakimov str., Burgas, 8010, Bulgaria ' Burgas University 'Assen Zlatarov', 1, Prof. Yakimov str., Burgas, 8010, Bulgaria ' Burgas University 'Assen Zlatarov', 1, Prof. Yakimov str., Burgas, 8010, Bulgaria ' Burgas University 'Assen Zlatarov', 1, Prof. Yakimov str., Burgas, 8010, Bulgaria ' Criterion Catalysts and Technologies, Badhuisweg 3, P.O. Box 38000, 1031 CM, Amsterdam, The Netherlands ' Criterion Catalysts and Technologies, 910 Louisiana St, Suite 2900, Houston, Texas 77002, USA ' Axens, 89 Boulevard Franklin Roosevelt, 92500 Rueil-Malmaison, France ' Axens, 89 Boulevard Franklin Roosevelt, 92500 Rueil-Malmaison, France

Abstract: This study focuses on investigating the conversion behaviour of vacuum residue and blends with heavy VGO (480-540°C) and atmospheric residue (340°C+), three fractions originating from the same Russian export blend crude oil (REBCO), in a laboratory ebullated bed hydrocracking pilot plant unit and in the LUKOIL Neftohim Burgas commercial H-Oil_RC hydrocracker. It was found that the vacuum residue conversion was 1.7 times as high as that of the VGO at the same operating conditions in both laboratory and in the commercial H-Oil_RC hydrocracking unit. No increase in the sediment content of the atmospheric residue product, obtained during hydrocracking of the lighter feeds, was observed. It was found that the vacuum residue H-Oil hydrocracking is best described by 1.5 order kinetics. This study showed that co-processing of distillate material (mainly vacuum gas oil) is an option to increase capacity of an existing H-Oil_RC residue hydrocracker while also improving the VGO product quality without adversely impacting sediment levels in the unconverted residue product. [Received: February 2, 2017; Accepted: September 21, 2017]

Keywords: ebullated bed hydrocracking; vacuum resid; atmospheric resid; heavy vacuum gas oil; feedstock reactivity.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOGCT.2019.102280

International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, 2019 Vol.22 No.1, pp.16 - 39

Received: 02 Feb 2017
Accepted: 21 Sep 2017
Published online: 16 Sep 2019 *

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