Petroleum treatment catalytic processes

Cycloversion A petroleum treatment process which combined catalytic reforming with hydrodesulfurization. The catalyst was bauxite. The process differed from the Houdry process in that the catalyst bed temperature was controlled by injecting an inert gas. Developed by the Phillips Petroleum Company and used in the United States in the 1940s. Pet. Refin., 1960, 39(9), 205. 

This review paper is concentrated on problems in scaling-up multiphase catalytic fixed bed reactors such as trickle-bed or packed bubble column reactors, in which two fluid phases (gas and liquid) pass concurrently through a bed of solid (usually porous) catalyst particles. These types of reactors are widely used in chemical and petrochemical industry as well as in biotechnology and waste water treatment. Typical processes are the hydrodesulphurization of petroleum fractions, the butinediol syntheses in the Reppe process for synthetic rubber, the anthrachinon/hydrochinon process for H202 production, biochemical processes with fixed enzymes or the oxidative treatment of waste water under pressure. 

Furthermore, molecular analysis is absolutely necessary for the petroleum industry in order to interpret the chemical processes being used and to evaluate the efficiency of treatments whether they be thermal or catalytic. This chapter will therefore present physical analytical methods used in the molecular characterization of petroleum. 

Solvent extraction may also be used to reduce asphaltenes and metals from heavy fractions and residues before using them in catalytic cracking. The organic solvent separates the resids into demetallized oil with lower metal and asphaltene content than the feed, and asphalt with high metal content. Figure 3-2 shows the IFP deasphalting process and Table 3-2 shows the analysis of feed before and after solvent treatment. Solvent extraction is used extensively in the petroleum refining industry. Each process uses its selective solvent, but, the basic principle is the same as above. 

An additional problem in processing of shale oil compared with petroleum processing is the presence of appreciable quantities of arsenic in shale oil. Arsenic can be a poison for hydrodenitrification catalysts (19). Various pretreatment steps, such as contacting with sodium hydroxide (19) or using a catalytic guard bed (20) or noncatalytic heat treatment (21), have been proposed to remove the arsenic prior to hydrodenitrification. 

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