Hydro-treating petroleum liquids

Equipment. In designing the apparatus to be used for the hydro-treating and hydrocracking of SRC, heavy reliance was placed on the petroleum-processing experience in the Houdry Division of Air Products. A continuous process development unit was designed and constructed to catalytically hydroprocess nominally 1 L/hr of SRC liquid. A simplified flowsheet of the unit appears in Figure 1. 

This program concentrated on the requirements and problems that are expected during typical refinery processing. The main concerted efforts, therefore, were to detect and differentiate levels of performance of the synthetic liquids compared with the performances of an appropriate petroleum counterpart stream. Temperature was used as the primary process variable. If catalyst on-stream life and conversion are to be optimized, then an accurate temperature profile performance must be the initial step. Hydro-treating performances were evaluated under simulated refinery conditions while varying the most practical primary process variable, temperature. All experimental work utilized American Cyanamid HDS-3A catalyst. 

The heavy distillate fractions of shale and coal liquids will require hydro-treating in the event that they were to be used as an FCC charge stock or a fuel oil. The hydro-treating of these heavy distillates does not appear to facilitate optimum application of these materials however, this program s primary objective was to study the hydro-treating of the complete full range distillates and their subsequent comparison with petroleum. 

Table VII presents the results of hydro-treating the heavy distillates. The petroleum fraction was 56% desulfurized at 625°F and 83% at 725°F. Desulfurization of the coal material was 82% at 625°F and 90% at 725°F. The shale liquid underwent 28% desulfurization at 625°F and 56% at 725°F. Denitrogenation of the coal and shale heavy gas oils was very poor. Maximum denitrogenation occurred at 725 °F and gave values of 69% for petroleum, 17% for coal, and 56% for the shale material. The tabulated experimental results are presented in Table VII.

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