Ebullated-Bed Hydroprocessing

T-Star. An extension of H-Oil process, which can maintain global conversions in the range of 20%-60% and specifically HDS of 93%-99%. This process can act as an FCC pretreater or vacuum gas oil hydrocracker. H-Oil catalyst can be used in the T-Star process. A T-Star reactor can also be placed in-line with an H-Oil reactor to improve the quality of H-Oil distillate products. In mild hydroCTacking mode, the T-Star process can reach conversions up to 60%, with a catalyst not sensitive to sulfur and nitrogen levels in the feed, and will provide constant conversion, product yields, and product quality (Gragnani, 2011). 

Super oil cracking (SOC). It uses horizontal furnace tubes as the reaction zone. A finely ground catalyst to promote cracking of the heavy feed is added to the slurry. The process employs severe conditions such as H2 pressure above 20 MPa, temperature about 480°C, and relatively short residence time. So far, the process has been demonstrated using a vacuum residue on a 3500 BPD scale (Dickenson et al., 1996). 

Microcat-RC. Catalytic ebullated-bed hydroconversion process that operates at relatively moderate pressures and temperatures. The catalyst particles are uniformly dispersed throughout the feed, which results in a smaller distance between particles and less time for a reactant molecule or intermediate to find an active catalyst site. The hydrocarbon feed, micro-catalyst, and hydrogen are fed to the reactor. The effluent is sent to a flash separation zone to recover hydrogen, gases, and liquid products. The residuum from the flash step is then fed to a vacuum distillation tower to obtain a 565°C- product oil and a 565°C+ bottoms fraction that contains unconverted feed, micro-catalyst, and essentially all of the feed metals (Bearden, 1997 Mart et al., 2005). 

Eni slurry technology (EST). Based on the slurry hydrotreatment of the heavy feedstock at relatively low temperature in the presence of hydrogen and a dispersed catalyst, which is recycled to the slurry reactor via solvent deasphalting together with the asphaltene recycle. EST has demonstrated residue conversion of 98%-99%, HDS 80%, HDM 99%, and CCR 

Modeling of Processes and Reactors for Upgrading of Heavy Petroleum 

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Lott, R.K., Lee, L.-K. 2008. Ebullated bed hydroprocessing methods and systems and methods of upgrading an existing ebullated bed system. U.S. Patent 7,449,103, November 11. 

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