Open AccessRole of Catalyst in Optimizing Fluid Catalytic Cracking Performance During Cracking of H-Oil-Derived Gas Oils
Author(s) -
Dicho Stratiev,
Ivelina Shishkova,
Mihail Ivanov,
Rosen Dinkov,
B. Georgiev,
Georgi Argirov,
Vassia Atanassova,
Peter Vassilev,
Krassimir Atanassov,
Dobromir Yordanov,
A. A. Popov,
Alessia Padovani,
Ulrike Hartmann,
Stefan Brandt,
Svetoslav Nenov,
Sotir Sotirov,
Evdokia Sotirova
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
acs omega
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.779
H-Index - 40
ISSN - 2470-1343
DOI - 10.1021/acsomega.0c06207
Subject(s) - catalysis , porosity , fluid catalytic cracking , coke , cracking , materials science , raw material , fuel oil , light crude oil , chemical engineering , metallurgy , chemistry , waste management , composite material , organic chemistry , engineering
Three H-Oil gas oils, heavy atmospheric gas oil (HAGO), light vacuum gas oil (LVGO), heavy vacuum gas oil (HVGO), and two their blends with hydrotreated straight run vacuum gas oils (HTSRVGOs) were cracked on two high unit cell size (UCS) lower porosity commercial catalysts and two low UCS higher porosity commercial catalysts. The cracking experiments were performed in an advanced cracking evaluation fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) laboratory unit at 527 °C, 30 s catalyst time on stream, and catalyst-to-oil (CTO) variation between 3.5 and 7.5 wt/wt The two high UCS lower porosity catalysts were more active and more coke selective. However, the difference between conversion of the more active high UCS lower porosity and low UCS higher porosity catalysts at 7.5 wt/wt CTO decreased in the order 10% (HAGO) > 9% (LVGO) > 6% (HVGO) > 4% (80% HTSRVGO/20% H-Oil VGO). Therefore, the catalyst performance is feedstock-dependent. The four studied catalysts along with a blend of one of them with 2% ZSM-5 were examined in a commercially revamped UOP FCC VSS unit. The lower UCS higher porosity catalysts exhibited operation at a higher CTO ratio achieving a similar conversion level with more active higher UCS lower porosity catalysts. However, the higher UCS lower porosity catalysts made 0.67% Δ coke that was higher than the maximum acceptable limit of 0.64% for this particular commercial FCC unit (FCCU), which required excluding the HVGO from the FCC feed blend. The catalyst system containing ZSM-5 increased the LPG yield but did not have an impact on gasoline octane. It was found that the predominant factor that controls refinery profitability related to the FCCU performance is the FCC slurry oil (bottoms) yield.