LC-Fining

LC-Fining, as developed by ABB Lummus Crest, represents a branch of the HRI technology, which saw its first commercial operation come online in 1984 at BP, Texas City refinery in the United States. The BP LC-Fining unit was the first three-stage ebullated-bed unit. The meaning of LC is Lummus Corporation, the process developer company. 

A list of emrrent operating ebullated-bed units and some planned to be commissioned in the next years is given in Table 10.4. Operating conditions of ebullated-bed prcx esses (H-Oil and LC-Fining) are sununarized in Table 10.5. 

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Commercial VR HCK processes include LC Fining from Chevron-Lummus Global H-Oil from Axens/IFP Canmet from Petro-Canada HC3 from Hydrocarbon Technologies, Inc. Hycycle Unicracking from UOP VCC from Veba Oil HDH from Intevep SA - IFP U-Can from SCN-Lavalin and ENI Slurry Technology (EST) from Snamprogetti SpA and EniTecnologie. 

LC-Fining [Lummus Cities refining] A hydrocracking process using an ebullated catalyst bed. Developed by Lummus Crest and Cities Service Research and Development Company since the 1960s, initially for upgrading bitumen from tar sands. Three units were operating in 1996. 

Gordon T, Chen Lc, Fine JM, et al Pulmonary effects of inhaled zinc oxide in human subjects, guinea pigs, rats, and Tidohixs. Am Ind Hyg Assoc J 53 503-509, 1992... 

Fig. 17. Schematic flow diagram of residuum hydroprocessing unit utilizing LC-Fining expanded-bed reactor (van Driesen and Fornoff, 1985).

C-E Lummus/Cities Service LC-Fining process licensed by AMOCO (van Driesen and Fornoff, 1985 Beaton et al., 1986) utilizes an expanded-bed reactor. A flow diagram of the LC-Fining process is shown in Fig. 17. The Canadian DOE CANMET process (Menzies et al., 1981), the Exxon M-Coke (Bearden and Aldridge, 1981), and the UOP Aurabon (Anderson et al., 1982) processes now in pilot plant stages of development employ slurry reactors. 

Yield and Product Quality for High-Conversion LC-Fining of Lloydminster/Cold Lake Residua"... 

The LC-Fining process is a hydrogenation process capable of desulfurizing, demetallizing, and upgrading a wide spectrum of heavy feedstocks (Tables 9-12 and 9-13) by means of an expanded bed reactor (Fomoff, 1982 Reich et al., 1993 Hydrocarbon Processing, 1998). 

The LC-Fining process has been applied to desulfurization of bitumen extracted from the Athabasca tar sands (Bishop, 1990). In one reported instance, a low-solids bitumen and a high-solids bitumen were employed as feedstocks whereupon good conversion of the bitumen to lower-sulfur products was noted... 

LC-Fining process a hydrogenation process capable of desulfurizing, demetallizing and upgrading heavy feedstocks by means of an expanded bed reactor. 

Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) licensed the process and built an LC-Fining unit at their Salamanca, Mexico refinery. This unit was designed to process 18,500 BPD of petroleum residua. The LC-Finer was started-up in September of 1973 and a successful performance test was completed in November of 1974. The PEMEX unit has been used to process very high metal content feedstocks (more than 300 ppm V and Ni) which are not feasible in competing technology such as fixed bed catalytic reactors. 

The PDU results from the LC-Fining program on coal extracts were encouraging. DOE extended the original contract twice in order to accomodate an expanded scope of work. Several different types of bituminous and sub-bituminous coal extracts were successfully processed in the PDU. Various extract to solvent feed ratios were used over a wide range of process conditions in runs... 

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